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and diminutive tigers in livery several sizes too large for them were perched on the boxes of the anti-
quated but armigerous equipages that swayed down the groves of sugar-cane and of hat-doffing slaves.
For it is plain that the Pagerie, though prosperous, was never a very repslendent establishment. But
time, which has dealt so harshly here with bricks and mortar, has spared, in its entirety, the atmosphere
that must have dominated the childhood of Josephine. For a kind of lovesick sloth, a heavy languishing
drowsiness, prevails among the palms and the hibiscus and the mango trees. It clings to the liana-grown
stones and the branches that trail their wild-vine over the water. It relives here as perceptibly as the mood
that unfurls at the sound, on a hot afternoon, of a single note struck on a spinet in a disused room. And in
this warm Martinican air, it becomes at once apparent why Josephine, shivering in the boreal climate of
Europe, organized the heating system of Malmaison so that the rooms maintained all the year round the
same mild West Indian temperature.
It is symptomatic of cultural orientations in the islands that Dr. Rose-Rosette, although not a rich man,
should have been the person to buy la Pagerie. He has a passion for it, and, walking among the leaves
and ruins, listening to his enthusiastic voice as it traced and reconstructed every detail of history and con-
jecture about the former inhabitants of his house, the spell of the place became doubly real. He and his
brother spend days slashing away at the invading vegetation, amputating parasites, propping up stones
that the creepers were about to dislodge, and searching through old books and papers for yet another atom
of relevant knowledge or corroborative detail.
My purpose, on this second visit, was twofold: one, simply to see this place again before leaving Marti-
nique; the other, more specifically, to look through the copy of an inventory of the Pagerie, at the time of
Madame Tascher's death, which is in Rose-Rosette's possession. We got there after dark. Some French
friends of the doctor's were staying in the house. Two shy and unusually fair children were curled up on
the floor, surrounded by picture books of Babar and Bécassine and Images d'Epinal , and another book I
had never seen called ' Les Aventures de Lord Ping-Pong .' I looked over their shoulders at this splendid
Englishman: a walrus moustache, an eyeglass, protruding teeth, a deerstalker, an elephant gun, a valet,
a private aeroplane and a wonderful accent ('Ô, il n'est pas de la gibier ici? Good gracious, je fiche la
camp , yes, yes….').
I spread the Inventory out under the lamp. 'The year eighteen hundred and seven,' it began, 'and the
third of the Emperor Napoleon…. The deceased lady, Rose du Verger de Sauvis, widow of messire Gas-
pard de Tascher, chevalier, Seigneur of the Pagerie, and mother of Her Majesty the Empress of the French,
Queen of Italy …' and went on, 'the Inventory of goods, furniture, slaves and cattle, jewels and silver
of the late lady….' The witnesses were Alexandre d'Audifrédy, Auguste Chasteau de Balyon, Georges
Cacqueray de Valmenière and Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse. (The last two of these romantic names are
famous ones in the history of the English as well as the French islands, during the wars of the eighteenth
century.)
She did not seem, considering her position, to have a great deal to leave in the way of precious heir-
looms; a few jewels, portraits and caskets painted with portraits of the Imperial family, and 'secondly a
snuff-box in gold that was in the daily use of the late lady,' a bundle of 'Imperial correspondence,' a por-
trait of the Queen of Holland, 'the late lady's grand-daughter,' some linen; and ' trois mauvaises malles
et une cassette .' Then comes 'item, thirty barracoons for the Negroes, roofed with palm branches, built
and palissaded with reeds, estimated value 1,320 livres '; a manioquerie —a mill for the preparation of
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