Yves sleeps quietly on this occasion, without dealing any blows to the floor or the panels with either fists or feet.  He has hung his watch on one of the hands of our gilded idol in order to be more sure of seeing the hour at any time of the night, by the light of the sacred lamps.  He gets up betimes in the morning, asking:  “Well, did I behave properly?” and dresses in haste, preoccupied about duty and the roll-call.

Outside, no doubt, it is daylight already:  through the tiny holes which time has pierced in our wooden panels, threads of morning light penetrate our chamber, and in the atmosphere of our room where night still lingers, they trace vague white rays.  Soon, when the sun shall have risen, these rays will lengthen and become beautifully golden.  The cocks and the cicalas make themselves heard, and now Madame Prune will begin her mystic drone.

Nevertheless, out of politeness for Yves-San, Chrysantheme lights a lantern and escorts him to the foot of the dark staircase.  I even fancy that, on parting, I hear a kiss exchanged.  In Japan this is of no consequence, I know; it is very usual, and quite admissible; no matter where one goes, in houses one enters for the first time, one is quite at liberty to kiss any mousme who may be present, without any notice being taken of it.  But with regard to Chrysantheme, Yves is in a delicate position, and he ought to understand it better.  I begin to feel uneasy about the hours they have so often spent together alone; and I make up my mind that this very day I will not play the spy upon them, but speak frankly to Yves, and make a clean breast of it.

Suddenly from below, clac! clac! two dry hands are clapped together; it is Madame Prune’s warning to the Great Spirit.  And immediately after her prayer breaks forth, soars upward in a shrill nasal falsetto, like a morning alarum when the hour for waking has come, the mechanical noise of a spring let go and running down.

" . . .The richest woman in the world!  Cleansed from all my sins, O Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami! in the river of Kamo.”

And this extraordinary bleating, hardly human, scatters and changes my ideas, which were very nearly clear at the moment I awoke.

CHAPTER XLIX

RUMORS OF DEPARTURE

September 15th.

Rumor of departure is in the air.  Since yesterday there has been vague talk of our being sent to China, to the Gulf of Pekin; one of those rumors which spread, no one knows how, from one end of the ship to the other, two or three days before the official orders arrive, and which usually turn out tolerably correct.  What will the last act of my little Japanese comedy be? the denouement, the separation?  Will there be any touch of sadness on the part of my mousme, or on my own, just a tightening of the heartstrings at the moment of our final farewell?  At this moment I can imagine nothing of the sort.  And then the adieus of Yves and Chrysantheme, what will they be?  This question preoccupies me more than all.