tea-service on the floor, the landscape seen through the veranda, the pagoda perched among the clouds; and over all the same affectation everywhere, in every detail.  Even the woman’s melancholy voice, still to be heard behind the paper partition, was evidently the proper way for them to sing—­these musicians I had so often seen painted in amazing colors on rice-paper, half closing their dreamy eyes among impossibly large flowers.  Long before I arrived there, I had perfectly pictured Japan to myself.  Nevertheless, in the reality it almost seems to be smaller, more finicking than I had imagined it, and also much more mournful, no doubt by reason of that great pall of black clouds hanging over us, and this incessant rain.

While awaiting M. Kangourou (who is dressing himself, it appears, and will be here shortly), it may be as well to begin luncheon.

In the daintiest bowl imaginable, adorned with flights of storks, is the most wildly impossible soup made of seaweed.  After which there are little fish dried in sugar, crabs in sugar, beans in sugar, and fruits in vinegar and pepper.  All this is atrocious, but above all unexpected and unimaginable.  The little women make me eat, laughing much, with that perpetual, irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan—­they make me eat, according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with affected grace.  I am becoming accustomed to their faces.  The whole effect is refined—­a refinement so entirely different from our own that at first sight I understand nothing of it, although in the long run it may end by pleasing me.

Suddenly enters, like a night butterfly awakened in broad daylight, like a rare and surprising moth, the dancing-girl from the other compartment, the child who wore the horrible mask.  No doubt she wishes to have a look at me.  She rolls her eyes like a timid kitten, and then all at once tamed, nestles against me, with a coaxing air of childishness, which is a delightfully transparent assumption.  She is slim, elegant, delicate, and smells sweet; she is drolly painted, white as plaster, with a little circle of rouge marked very precisely in the middle of each cheek, the mouth reddened, and a touch of gilding outlining the under lip.  As they could not whiten the back of her neck on account of all the delicate little curls of hair growing there, they had, in their love of exactitude, stopped the white plaster in a straight line, which might have been cut with a knife, and in consequence at the nape appears a square of natural skin of a deep yellow.

An imperious note sounds on the guitar, evidently a summons!  Crac!  Away she goes, the little fairy, to entertain the drivelling fools on the other side of the screens.

Suppose I marry this one, without seeking any further.  I should respect her as a child committed to my care; I should take her for what she is:  a fantastic and charming plaything.  What an amusing little household I should set up!  Really, short of marrying a china ornament, I should find it difficult to choose better.