“Once upon a time a little girl when she opened a large fruit that had
come from the colonies, a big creature came out of it, a green creature,
and it bit her and that made her die.”
It was my little friend Antoinette (she was six and I seven) who was
telling me the story which had been suggested to her because we were
about to break and divide an apricot between us. We were at the extreme
end of her garden in the lovely month of June under a branching apricot
tree. We sat very close together upon the same stool in a house about as
big as a bee-hive, which we had built for our exclusive use out of old
planks. Our dwelling was covered with pieces of foreign matting that had
come from the Antilles packed about some boxes of coffee. The sunbeams
pierced the roof, which was of a coarse straw-colored material, and
the warm breeze that stirred the leaves of the trees about us made the
sunlight dance as it fell upon our faces and aprons. (During at least
two summers it had been our favorite amusement to build, in isolated
nooks, houses like the one described in Robinson Crusoe, and thus hidden
away we would sit together and chat.) In the story of the little girl
who was bitten by the big creature this phrase, “a very large fruit
from the colonies,” had suddenly plunged me into a reverie. And I had
a vision of trees, of strange fruits, and of forests filled with
marvelously colored birds. Ah! how much those magical but disturbing
words, “the colonies” conveyed to me in my childhood. To me they meant
at that time all tropical and distant countries, which I invariably
thought of as filled with giant palms, exquisite flowers, strange black
people and great animals. Although my ideas were so confused I had an
almost true conception, amounting to an intuition, of their mournful
splendor and their enervating melancholy.
I think that I saw a palm for the first time in an illustrated book
called the “Young Naturalists,” by Madame Ulliac-Tremadeure; the book
was one of my New Year's gifts, and I read some parts of it upon New
Year's evening. (Green-house palms had not at that time been brought to
our little town.)
The illustrator had placed two of these unfamiliar trees at the edge
of a sea-shore along which negroes were passing. Recently I was curious
enough to hunt in the little yellow, faded book for that picture, and
truly I wonder how that illustration had the power to create the very
least of my dreams unless it were that my immature mind was already
leavened by the memory of memories.
“The colonies!” Ah! how can I give an adequate idea of all that awoke
in my mind at the sound of these words? A fruit from there, a bird or a
shell, had instantly the greatest charm for me.
There were a number of things from the tropics in little Antoinette's
home: a parrot, birds of many colors in a cage, and collections of
shells and insects. In one of her mamma's bureau drawers I had seen
quaint necklaces of fragrant berries; in the garret, where we sometimes
rummaged, we found skins of animals and peculiar bags and cases upon
which could still be made out the names of towns in the Antilles; and a
faint tropical odor scented the entire house.
Antoinette's garden, as I have said, was separated from ours by a very
low wall overgrown with roses and jasmine. And the very old pomegranate
tree growing there spread its branches into our yard, and at the
blooming season its coral-red petals were scattered upon our grass.
Often we spoke from one house to the other:
“Can I come over and play with you?” I would ask. “Will your mamma allow
me?”
“No, because I have been naughty and I am being punished.” (That
happened very often.)--Such an answer always grieved me a great deal;
but I must confess that it was more on account of my disappointment over
the parrot and the tropical things than because of her punishment.
Little Antoinette had been born in the colonies, but, curiously enough,
she never seemed to value that fact, and they had very little charm for
her, indeed she scarcely remembered them. I would have given everything
I possessed in the world to have seen, if only for the briefest time,
one of those distant countries, inaccessible to me, as I well knew.
With a regret that was almost anguish I thought, alas! that in my life
as minister, live as long as I might, I would never, never see those
enchanting lands.