—"Ah! you have not eaten yet!" cries Manm-Robert. "Vini épi moin!" (Come with me!)
And Yzore—already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of the spiders—murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to Manm-Robert's little shop:—"Moin pa tchoué yo; moin chassé yo—ké vini encò." (I did not kill them; I only put them out;—they will come back again.)
But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went back....
XXVI
April 5th.
—"Toutt bel bois ka allé," says Manm-Robert. (All the beautiful trees are going.)... I do not understand.
—"Toutt bel bois—toutt bel moune ka allé," she adds, interpretatively. (All the "beautiful trees,"—all the handsome people,—are passing away.)... As in the speech of the world's primitive poets, so in the creole patois is a beautiful woman compared with a comely tree: nay, more than this, the name of the object is actually substituted for that of the living being. Yon bel bois may mean a fine tree: it more generally signifies a graceful woman: this is the very comparison made by Ulysses looking upon Nausicas, though more naïvely expressed.... And now there comes to me the recollection of a creole ballad illustrating the use of the phrase,—a ballad about a youth of Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre by his father to purchase a stock of dobannes,[25] who, falling in love with a handsome colored girl, spent all his father's mopey in buying her presents and a wedding outfit:—
"Moin descenne Saint-Piè
Acheté dobannes
Auliè ces dobannes
C'est yon bel-bois moin mennein monté!"
("I went down to Saint-Pierre to buy dobannes: instead of the dobannes, 'tis a pretty tree—a charming girl—that I bring back with me.")
—"Why, who is dead now, Manm-Robert?"