... They are burying twenty-five verettiers per day in the city.
But never was this tropic sky more beautiful;—never was this circling sea more marvellously blue;—never were the mornes more richly robed in luminous green, under a more golden day.... And it seems strange that Nature should remain so lovely....
... Suddenly it occurs to me that I have not seen Yzore nor her children for some days; and I wonder if they have moved away.... Towards evening, passing by Manm-Robert's, I ask about them. The old woman answers me very gravely:—
—"Aid, mon chè, c'est Yzore qui ni lavérette!"
The mother has been seized by the plague at last. But Manm-Robert will look after her; and Manm-Robert has taken charge of the three little ones, who are not now allowed to leave the house, for fear some one should tell them what it were best they should not know.... Pauv ti manmaille!
XXX
April 13th.
... Still the vérette does not attack the native whites. But the whole air has become poisoned; the sanitary condition of the city becomes unprecedentedly bad; and a new epidemic makes its appearance,—typhoid fever. And now the békés begin to go, especially the young and strong; and bells keep sounding for them, and the tolling bourdon fills the city with its enormous hum all day and far into the night. For these are rich; and the high solemnities of burial are theirs—the coffin of acajou, and the triple ringing, and the Cross of Gold to be carried before them as they pass to their long sleep under the palms,—saluted for the last time by all the population of St. Pierre, standing bareheaded in the sun....
... Is it in times like these, when all the conditions are febrile, that one is most apt to have queer dreams?
Last night it seemed to me that I saw that Carnival dance again,—the hooded musicians, the fantastic torrent of peaked caps, and the spectral masks, and the swaying of bodies and waving of arms,—but soundless as a passing of smoke. There were figures I thought I knew;—hands I had somewhere seen reached out and touched me in silence;—and then, all suddenly, a Viewless Something seemed to scatter the shapes as leaves are blown by a wind.... And waking, I thought I heard again,—plainly as on that last Carnival afternoon,—the strange cry of fear:—"C'est Bon-Dié ka passé!"...