—"It is little Marie, the porteuse, who has got the vérette. She is gone to the lazaretto."
[25]Red earthen-ware jars for keeping drinking-water cool. The origin of the word is probably to be sought in the name of the town, near Marseilles, where they are made,—"Aubagne."
XXVII
April 7th.
—Toutt bel bois ka allé.... News has just come that Ti Marie died last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by what they call the lavérette-pouff,—a form of the disease which strangles its victim within a few hours.
Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little màchanne I ever knew. Without being actually pretty, her face had a childish charm which made it a pleasure to look at her;—and she had a clear chocolate-red skin, a light compact little figure, and a remarkably symmetrical pair of little feet which had never felt the pressure of a shoe. Every morning I used to hear her passing cry, just about daybreak:—"Qui 'lè café?—qui 'lè sirop?" (Who wants coffee?—who wants syrup?) She looked about sixteen, but was a mother. "Where is her husband?" I ask. "Nhomme-y mò laverette 'tou." (Her man died of the verette also.) "And the little one, her yche? Y lazarett." (At the lazaretto.)... But only those without friends or relatives in the city are suffered to go to the lazaretto;—Ti Marie cannot have been of St. Pierre?
—"No: she was from Vauclin," answers Manm-Robert. "You do not often see pretty red girls who are natives of St. Pierre. St. Pierre has pretty sang-mêlées. The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin. The yellow ones, who are really bel-bois, are from Grande Anse: they are banana-colored people there. At Gros-Morne they are generally black."...
XXVIII
... It appears that the red race here, the race capresse, is particularly liable to the disease. Every family employing capresses for house-servants loses them;—one family living at the next corner has lost four in succession....
The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color;—the skin is naturally clear, smooth, glossy: it is of the capresse especially that the term "sapota-skin" (peau-chapoti) is used,—coupled with all curious creole adjectives to express what is comely,—jojoll, beaujoll,[26] etc. The hair is long, but bushy; the limbs light and strong, and admirably shaped.... I am told that when transported to a colder climate, the capre or capresse partly loses this ruddy tint. Here, under the tropic sun, it has a beauty only possible to imitate in metal.... And because photography cannot convey any idea of this singular color, the capresse hates a photograph.—"Moin pas noué," she says;—"moin ouôuge: ou fai moin nouè nans pàtrait-à." (I am not black: I am red:—you make me black in that portrait.) It is difficult to make her pose before the camera: she is red, as she avers, beautifully red; but the malicious instrument makes her gray or black—noué conm poule-zo-nouè ("black as a blackboned hen!")