"My dear young friend, I have made ready for you a charming room. Go
there for your confinement. Everything ends happily in heaven and you
will not die. I love little children and suffer them to come unto me."

And when she entered the little room which had been made ready for her
in the great Hospital of Divine Mercy, she saw that God had arranged a
surprise for her. There in a box lay the cat she loved, and there was
also a pot of basil on the window-sill. She lay down.

She had a pretty, little, golden-haired daughter, and the cat had four
sweet, delightfully black kittens.




THE LITTLE NEGRESS


Sometimes my imagination is fascinated by the yellowing of old ocean
charts, and in my feverish brain I hear the roaring of monsoons.
What then? Must I, in order to have an interest in this present life,
exhume that which, perhaps, I led before my birth, between two black
suns?

It was a vague region, abounding in stars and in the diffused sobbing
of an ocean. There was a scratching at my door, and I said, "Come in."

A young negress in a loose blue loincloth, reaching halfway down her
thighs, entered. She crouched down on the ground, and held out her