Cyrillia's room has no furniture in it: the Martinique bonne lives as
simply and as rudely as a domestic animal. One thin mattress covered
with a sheet, and elevated from the floor only by a léfant, forms her
bed. The _léfant_, or "elephant," is composed of two thick square pieces
of coarse hard mattress stuffed with shavings, and placed
end to end. Cyrillia has a good pillow, however,--_bourré épi
flêches-canne_,--filled with the plumes of the sugar-cane. A cheap
trunk with broken hinges contains her modest little wardrobe: a few
_mouchoirs_, or kerchiefs, used for head-dresses, a spare _douillette_,
or long robe, and some tattered linen. Still she is always clean, neat,
fresh-looking. I see a pair of sandals in the corner,--such as the women
of the country sometimes wear--wooden soles with a leather band for the
instep, and two little straps; but she never puts them on. Fastened to
the wall are two French prints--lithographs: one representing Victor
Hugo's _Esmeralda_ in prison with her pet goat; the other, Lamartine's
_Laurence_ with her fawn. Both are very old and stained and bitten by
the _bête-à-ciseau_, a species of _lepisma_, which destroys books
and papers, and everything it can find exposed. On a shelf are two
bottles,--one filled with holy water; another with _tafia camphrée_
(camphor dissolved in tafia), which is Cyrillia's sole remedy for colds,
fevers, headaches--all maladies not of a very fatal description. There
are also a little woollen monkey, about three inches high--the
dusty plaything of a long-dead child;--an image of the Virgin, even
smaller;--and a broken cup with fresh bright blossoms in it, the
Virgin's flower-offering;--and the Virgin's invariable lamp--a
night-light, a little wick floating on olive-oil in a tiny glass.
I know that Cyrillia must have bought these flowers--they are garden
flowers--at the Marchè du Fort. There are always old women sitting there
who sell nothing else but bouquets for the Virgin,--and who cry out to
passers-by:--"_Gagné ti bouquet pou Viège-ou, chè!_... Buy a nosegay,
dear, for your Virgin;--she is asking you for one;--give her a little
one, _chè cocott_."... Cyrillia says you must not smell the flowers you
give the Virgin: it would be stealing from her.... The little lamp is
always lighted at six o'clock. At six o'clock the Virgin is supposed to
pass through all the streets of St. Pierre, and wherever a lamp burns
before her image, she enters there and blesses that house. "_Faut limé
lampe ou pou fai la-Viège passé dans caïe-ou_," says Cyrillia. (You must
light the lamp to make the Virgin come into your house.)... Cyrillia
often talks to her little image, exactly as if it were a baby,--calls it
pet names,--asks if it is content with the flowers.
This image of the Virgin is broken: it is only half a Virgin,--the upper
half. Cyrillia has arranged it so, nevertheless, that had I not been
very inquisitive I should never have divined its mishap. She found a
small broken powder-box without a lid,--probably thrown negligently out
of a boudoir window by some wealthy beauty: she filled this little box
with straw, and fixed the mutilated image upright within it, so that you
could never suspect the loss of its feet. The Virgin looks very funny,
thus peeping over the edge of her little box,--looks like a broken toy,
which a child has been trying to mend. But this Virgin has offerings
too: Cyrillia buys flowers for her, and sticks them all round her,
between the edge of the powder-box and the straw. After all, Cyrillia's
Virgin is quite as serious a fact as any image of silver or of ivory in
the homes of the rich: probably the prayers said to her are more simply
beautiful, and more direct from the heart, than many daily murmured
before the _chapelles_ of luxurious homes. And the more one looks at it,
the more one feels that it were almost wicked to smile at this little
broken toy of faith.
--"Cyrillia, _mafi_," I asked her one day, after my discovery of the
little Virgin,--"would you not like me to buy a _chapelle_ for you?"
The _chapelle_ is the little bracket-altar, together with images and
ornaments, to be found in every creole bedroom.
--"_Mais non, Missié_," she answered, smiling, "_moin aimein ti Viège
moin, pa lè gagnin dautt_. I love my little Virgin: do not want any
other. I have seen much trouble: she was with me in my trouble;--she
heard my prayers. It would be wicked for me to throw her away. When I
have a sou to spare, I buy flowers for her;--when I have no money, I
climb the mornes, and pick pretty buds for her.... But why should Missié
want to buy me a _chapelle?_--Missié is a Protestant?"
--"I thought it might give you pleasure, Cyrillia."
--"No, Missié, I thank you; it would not give me pleasure. But Missié
could give me something else which would make me very happy--I often
thought of asking Missié...but--"
[Illustration: CREOLE WOMEN
_In their gay dresses with their brilliant "maárases"
and "foulards they seem always in gala array._]
--"Tell me what it is, Cyrillia."