I had quite made up my mind to carry out the scheme I had unfolded to him.  Yes, led on by ennui and solitude, I had gradually arrived at dreaming of and looking forward to such a marriage.  And then, above all, to live for awhile on land, in some shady nook, amid trees and flowers!  How tempting it sounded after the long months we had been wasting at the Pescadores (hot and arid islands, devoid of freshness, woods, or streamlets, full of faint odors of China and of death).

We had made great way in latitude since our vessel had quitted that Chinese furnace, and the constellations in the sky had undergone a series of rapid changes; the Southern Cross had disappeared at the same time as the other austral stars; and the Great Bear, rising on the horizon, was almost on as high a level as it is in the sky above France.  The evening breeze soothed and revived us, bringing back to us the memory of our summer-night watches on the coast of Brittany.

What a distance we were, however, from those familiar coasts!  What a tremendous distance!

MME. CHRYSANTHEME

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I

THE MYSTERIOUS LAND

At dawn we beheld Japan.

Precisely at the foretold moment the mysterious land arose before us, afar off, like a black dot in the vast sea, which for so many days had been but a blank space.

At first we saw nothing by the rays of the rising sun but a series of tiny pink-tipped heights (the Fukai Islands).  Soon, however, appeared all along the horizon, like a misty veil over the waters, Japan itself; and little by little, out of the dense shadow, arose the sharp, opaque outlines of the Nagasaki mountains.

The wind was dead against us, and the strong breeze, which steadily increased, seemed as if the country were blowing with all its might, in a vain effort to drive us away from its shores.  The sea, the rigging, the vessel itself, all vibrated and quivered as if with emotion.

CHAPTER II

STRANGE SCENES

By three o’clock in the afternoon all these far-off objects were close to us, so close that they overshadowed us with their rocky masses and deep green thickets.

We entered a shady channel between two high ranges of mountains, oddly symmetrical—­like stage scenery, very pretty, though unlike nature.  It seemed as if Japan were opened to our view through an enchanted fissure, allowing us to penetrate into her very heart.