Chapter XXV

... In most of the old stone houses you will occasionally see spiders of terrifying size,--measuring across perhaps as much as six inches from the tip of one outstretched leg to the tip of its opposite fellow, as they cling to the wall. I never heard of any one being bitten by them; and among the poor it is deemed unlucky to injure or drive them away.... But early this morning Yzore swept her house clean, and ejected through the door-way quite a host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite dismayed:--

--"_Jesis-Maïa!--ou 'lè malhè éncò fou fai ça, chè?_" (You want to have still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)

And Yzore answers:--

--"_Toutt moune içitt pa ni yon soul--ça fil zagrignin, et moin pa menm mangé! Epi laverette encò.... Main couè toutt ça ka pòté malhè!_" (No one here has a sou!--heaps of cobwebs like that, and nothing to eat yet; and the verette into the bargain.... I think those things bring bad luck.)

--"Ah! you have not eaten yet!" cries Manm-Robert. "_Vini épi moin!_" (Come with me!)

And Yzore--already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of the spiders--murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to Manm-Robert's little shop:--"_Moin pa tchoué yo; moin chassé yo--ké vini encò._" (I did not kill them; I only put them out;--they will come back again.)

But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went back....