No: there is one who has the courage,—a yellow goblin crying from behind his wire mask, in imitation of the màchannes: "Ça qui 'lè quatòze graines laverette pou yon sou?" (Who wants to buy fourteen verette-spots for a sou?)
Not a single laugh follows that jest.... And just one week from to-day, poor mocking goblin, you will have a great many more than quatorze graines, which will not cost you even a sou, and which will disguise you infinitely better than the mask you now wear;—and they will pour quick-lime over you, ere ever they let you pass through this street again—in a seven franc coffin!...
IX
And the multicolored clamoring stream rushes by,—swerves off at last through the Rue des Ursulines to the Savane,—rolls over the new bridge of the Roxelane to the ancient quarter of the Fort.
All of a sudden there is a hush, a halt;—the drums stop beating, the songs cease. Then I see a sudden scattering of goblins and demons and devilesses in all directions: they run into houses, up alleys,—hide behind door-ways. And the crowd parts; and straight through it, walking very quickly, conies a priest in his vestments, preceded by an acolyte who rings a little bell. C'est Bon-Dié ka passé! ("It is the Good-God who goes by!") The father is bearing the "viaticum" to some victim of the pestilence: one must not appear masked as a devil or a deviless in the presence of the Bon-Dié.
He goes by. The flood of maskers recloses behind the ominous passage;—the drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the fantastic mummery ebbs swiftly out of sight.
X
Night falls;—the maskers crowd to the ball-rooms to dance strange tropical measures that will become wilder and wilder as the hours pass. And through the black streets, the Devil makes his last Carnival-round.
By the gleam of the old-fashioned oil lamps hung across the thoroughfares I can make out a few details of his costume. He is clad in red, wears a hideous blood-colored mask, and a cap of which the four sides are formed by four looking-glasses;—the whole head-dress being surmounted by a red lantern. He has a white wig made of horse-hair, to make him look weird and old,—since the Devil is older than the world! Down the street he comes, leaping nearly his own height,—chanting words without human signification,—and followed by some three hundred boys, who form the chorus to his chant—all clapping hands together and giving tongue with a simultaneity that testifies how strongly the sense of rhythm enters into the natural musical feeling of the African,—a feeling powerful enough to impose itself upon, all Spanish-America, and there create the unmistakable characteristics of all that is called "creole music."
—"Bimbolo!"