I had been forewarned; these were only the djins who were touting for the honor of my preference; nevertheless I was startled at this sudden attack, this Japanese welcome on a first visit to land (the djins or djin-richisans, are the runners who drag little carts, and are paid for conveying people to and fro, being hired by the hour or the distance, as cabs are hired in Europe).

Their legs were naked; to-day they were very wet, and their heads were hidden under large, shady, conical hats.  By way of waterproofs they wore nothing less than mats of straw, with all the ends of the straws turned outward, bristling like porcupines; they seemed clothed in a thatched roof.  They continued to smile, awaiting my choice.

Not having the honor of being acquainted with any of them in particular, I chose at haphazard the djin with the umbrella and got into his little cart, of which he carefully lowered the hood.  He drew an oilcloth apron over my knees, pulling it up to my face, and then advancing, asked me, in Japanese, something which must have meant:  “Where to, sir?” To which I replied, in the same language, “To the Garden of Flowers, my friend.”

I said this in the three words I had, parrot-like, learned by heart, astonished that such sounds could mean anything, astonished, too, at their being understood.  We started, he running at full speed, I dragged along and jerked about in his light chariot, wrapped in oilcloth, shut up as if in a box—­both of us unceasingly drenched all the while, and dashing all around us the water and mud of the sodden ground.

“To the Garden of Flowers,” I had said, like a habitual frequenter of the place, and quite surprised at hearing myself speak.  But I was less ignorant about Japan than might have been supposed.  Many of my friends, on their return home from that country, had told me about it, and I knew a great deal; the Garden of Flowers is a tea-house, an elegant rendezvous.  There I should inquire for a certain Kangourou-San, who is at the same time interpreter, laundryman, and confidential agent for the intercourse of races.  Perhaps this very evening, if all went well, I should be introduced to the bride destined for me by mysterious fate.  This thought kept my mind on the alert during the panting journey we made, the djin and I, one dragging the other, under the merciless downpour.

Oh, what a curious Japan I saw that day, through the gaping of my oilcloth coverings, from under the dripping hood of my little cart!  A sullen, muddy, half-drowned Japan.  All these houses, men, and beasts, hitherto known to me only in drawings; all these, that I had beheld painted on blue or pink backgrounds of fans or vases, now appeared to me in their hard reality, under a dark sky, with umbrellas and wooden shoes, with tucked-up skirts and pitiful aspect.