You reach Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, by steamer from St.
Pierre, in about an hour and a half.... There is an overland route--_La
Trace_; but it is a twenty-five-mile ride, and a weary one in such a
climate, notwithstanding the indescribable beauty of the landscapes
which the lofty road commands.
... Rebuilt in wood after the almost total destruction by an earthquake
of its once picturesque streets of stone, Fort-de-France (formerly
Fort-Royal) has little of outward interest by comparison with St.
Pierre. It lies in a low, moist plain, and has few remarkable buildings:
you can walk all over the little town in about half an hour. But the
Savane,--the great green public square, with its grand tamarinds and
_sabliers_,--would be worth the visit alone, even were it not made
romantic by the marble memory of Josephine.
I went to look at the white dream of her there, a creation of
master-sculptors.... It seemed to me absolutely lovely.
Sea winds have bitten it; tropical rains have streaked it: some
microscopic growth has darkened the exquisite hollow of the throat. And
yet such is the human charm of the figure that you almost fancy you are
gazing at a living presence.... Perhaps the profile is less artistically
real,--statuesque to the point of betraying the chisel; but when you
look straight up into the sweet creole face, you can believe she lives:
all the wonderful West Indian charm of the woman is there.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE
"_I went to look at the white dream of her there a
creation of master-sculptors.... It seems to me absolutely
lovely._"]
She is standing just in the centre of the Savane, robed in the fashion
of the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders bare: one hand
leans upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile of Napoleon.... Seven
tall palms stand in a circle around her, lifting their comely heads into
the blue glory of the tropic day. Within their enchanted circle you feel
that you tread holy ground,--the sacred soil of artist and poet;--here
the recollections of memoir-writers vanish away; the gossip of history
is hushed for you; you no longer care to know how rumor has it that she
spoke or smiled or wept: only the bewitchment of her lives under the
thin, soft, swaying shadows of those feminine palms.... Over violet
space of summer sea, through the vast splendor of azure light, she is
looking back to the place of her birth, back to beautiful drowsy
Trois-Islets,--and always with the same half-dreaming, half-plaintive
smile,--unutterably touching....