It seemed extraordinary that the quaint words, the curious phrases I had learned during our exile at the Pescadores Islands—­by sheer dint of dictionary and grammar, without attaching the least sense to them—­should mean anything.  But so it seemed, however, for I was at once understood.

I wished in the first place to speak to one M. Kangourou, who is interpreter, laundryman, and matrimonial agent.  Nothing could be easier:  they knew him and were willing to go at once in search of him; and the elder of the waiting-maids made ready for the purpose her wooden clogs and her paper umbrella.

Next I demanded a well-served repast, composed of the greatest delicacies of Japan.  Better and better! they rushed to the kitchen to order it.

Finally, I beg they will give tea and rice to my djin, who is waiting for me below; I wish,—­in short, I wish many things, my dear little dolls, which I will mention by degrees and with due deliberation, when I shall have had time to assemble the necessary words.  But the more I look at you the more uneasy I feel as to what my fiancee of to-morrow may be like.  Almost pretty, I grant you, you are—­in virtue of quaintness, delicate hands, miniature feet, but ugly, after all, and absurdly small.  You look like little monkeys, like little china ornaments, like I don’t know what.  I begin to understand that I have arrived at this house at an ill-chosen moment.  Something is going on which does not concern me, and I feel that I am in the way.

From the beginning I might have guessed as much, notwithstanding the excessive politeness of my welcome; for I remember now, that while they were taking off my boots downstairs, I heard a murmuring chatter overhead, then a noise of panels moved quickly along their grooves, evidently to hide from me something not intended for me to see; they were improvising for me the apartment in which I now am just as in menageries they make a separate compartment for some beasts when the public is admitted.

Now I am left alone while my orders are being executed, and I listen attentively, squatted like a Buddha on my black velvet cushion, in the midst of the whiteness of the walls and mats.

Behind the paper partitions, feeble voices, seemingly numerous, are talking in low tones.  Then rises the sound of a guitar, and the song of a woman, plaintive and gentle in the echoing sonority of the bare house, in the melancholy of the rainy weather.

What one can see through the wide-open veranda is very pretty; I will admit that it resembles the landscape of a fairytale.  There are admirably wooded mountains, climbing high into the dark and gloomy sky, and hiding in it the peaks of their summits, and, perched up among the clouds, is a temple.  The atmosphere has that absolute transparency, that distance and clearness which follows a great fall of rain; but a thick pall, still heavy with moisture, remains suspended over all, and on the foliage of the hanging woods still