_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."...