_Tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_ ... The spectacle is interesting from the
Batterie d'Esnotz. High up the Rue Peysette,--up all the precipitous
streets that ascend the mornes,--a far gathering of showy color appears:
the massing of maskers in rose and blue and sulphur-yellow attire....
Then what a _degringolade_ begins!--what a tumbling, leaping, cascading
of color as the troupes descend. Simultaneously from north and south,
from the Mouillage and the Fort, two immense bands enter the Grande
Rue;--the great dancing societies these,--the _Sans-souci_ and the
_Intrépides._ They are rivals; they are the composers and singers of
those Carnival songs,--cruel satires most often, of which the local
meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the incident
inspiring the improvisation,--of which the words are too often coarse or
obscene,--whose burdens will be caught up and re-echoed through all the
burghs of the island. Vile as may be the motive, the satire, the malice,
these chants are preserved for generations by the singular beauty of the
airs; and the victim of a Carnival song need never hope that his failing
or his wrong will be forgotten: it will be sung of long after he is in
his grave.
... Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the street is thronged
with a shouting, shrieking, laughing, gesticulating host of maskers.
Thicker and thicker the press becomes;--the drums are silent: all are
waiting for the signal of the general dance. Jests and practical jokes
are being everywhere perpetrated; there is a vast hubbub, made up of
screams, cries, chattering, laughter. Here and there snatches of
Carnival song are being sung:--"_Cambronne, Cambronne_;" or "_Ti
fenm-là doux, li doux, li doux!_"... "Sweeter than sirup the little
woman is";--this burden will be remembered when the rest of the song
passes out of fashion. Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks,
pulling the beards and patting the faces of white spectators.... "_Main
connaitt! ou, chè!--moin connaitt ou, doudoux! ba moin ti d'mi franc!_"
It is well to refuse the half-franc,--though you do not know what these
maskers might take a notion to do to-day.... Then all the great drums
suddenly boom together; all the bands strike up; the mad medley
kaleidoscopes into some sort of order; and the immense processional
dance begins. Prom the Mouillage to the Fort there is but one continuous
torrent of sound and color: you are dazed by the tossing of peaked caps,
the waving of hands, and twinkling of feet;--and all this passes with a
huge swing,--a regular swaying to right and left.... It will take at
least an hour for all to pass; and it is an hour well worth passing.
Band after band whirls by; the musicians all garbed as women or as monks
in canary-colored habits;--before them the dancers are dancing backward,
with a motion as of skaters; behind them all leap and wave hands as in
pursuit. Most of the bands are playing creole airs,--but that of the
_Sans-souci_ strikes up the melody of the latest French song in
vogue,--_Petits amoureux aux plumes_ ("Little feathered lovers"[18]).
Everybody now seems to know this song by heart; you hear children only
five or six years old singing it: there are pretty lines in it, although
two out of its four stanzas are commonplace enough, and it is certainly
the air rather than the words which accounts for its sudden popularity.
[Footnote 18: "Petits amoureux aux plumes,
Enfants d'un brillant séjour
Vous ignorez l'amertume,
Vous parlez souvent d'amour:...
Vous méprisez la dorure,
Les salons, et les bijoux;
Vous chérissez la Nature,
Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!
"Voyez là bas, dans cette église,
Auprès d'un confessional,
Le prêtre, qui veut faire croire à Lise,
Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;--
Pour prouver à la mignonne
Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux,
N'a jamais damné personne
Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"
[_Translation._]
Little feathered lovers, cooing,
Children of the radiant air,
Sweet your speech,--the speech of wooing;
Ye have ne'er a grief to bear!
Gilded ease and jewelled fashion
Never own a charm for you;
Ye love Nature's truth with passion.
Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!
See that priest who, Lise confessing,
Wants to make the girl believe
That a kiss without a blessing
Is a fault for which to grieve!
Now to prove, to his vexation,
That no tender kiss and true
Ever caused a soul's damnation,
Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!]
V
... Extraordinary things are happening in the streets through which the
procession passes. Pest-smitten women rise from their beds to costume
themselves,--to mask face already made unrecognizable by the hideous
malady,--and stagger out to join the dancers.... They do this in the Rue
Longchamps, in the Rue St. Jean-de-Dieu, in the Rue Peysette, in the Rue
de Petit Versailles. And in the Rue Ste.-Marthe there are three young
girls sick with the disease, who hear the blowing of the horns and the
pattering of feet and clapping of hands in chorus;--they get up to look
through the slats of their windows on the masquerade,--and the creole
passion of the dance comes upon them. "Ah!" cries one,--"_nou ké
amieusé nou!--c'est zaffai si nou mò!_" [We will have our fill of fun:
what matter if we die after!] And all mask, and join the rout, and dance
down to the Savane, and over the river bridge into the high streets of
the Fort, carrying contagion with them!... No extraordinary example,
this: the ranks of the dancers hold many and many a _verrettier._