At this moment enters M. Kangourou, clad in a suit of gray tweed, which might have come from La Belle Jardiniere or the Pont Neuf, with a pot-hat and white thread gloves.  His countenance is at once foolish and cunning; he has hardly any nose or eyes.  He makes a real Japanese salutation:  an abrupt dip, the hands placed flat on the knees, the body making a right angle to the legs, as if the fellow were breaking in two; a little snake-like hissing (produced by sucking the saliva between the teeth, which is the highest expression of obsequious politeness in this country).

“You speak French, Monsieur Kangourou?”

“Yes, Monsieur” (renewed bows).

He makes one for each word I utter, as if he were a mechanical toy pulled by a string; when he is seated before me on the ground, he limits himself to a duck of the head—­always accompanied by the same hissing noise of the saliva.

“A cup of tea, Monsieur Kangourou?”

Fresh salute and an extra affected gesticulation with the hands, as if to say, “I should hardly dare.  It is too great a condescension on your part.  However, anything to oblige you.”

He guesses at the first words what I require from him.

“Of course,” he replies, “we shall see about it at once.  In a week’s time, as it happens, a family from Simonoseki, in which there are two charming daughters, will be here!”

“What! in a week!  You don’t know me, Monsieur Kangourou!  No, no, either now, to-morrow, or not at all.”

Again a hissing bow, and Kangourou-San, understanding my agitation, begins to pass in feverish review all the young persons at his disposal in Nagasaki.

“Let us see—­there was Mademoiselle Oeillet.  What a pity that you did not speak a few days sooner!  So pretty!  So clever at playing the guitar!  It is an irreparable misfortune; she was engaged only yesterday by a Russian officer.

“Ah!  Mademoiselle Abricot!—­Would she suit you, Mademoiselle Abricot?  She is the daughter of a wealthy China merchant in the Decima Bazaar, a person of the highest merit; but she would be very dear:  her parents, who think a great deal of her, will not let her go under a hundred yen—­[A yen is equal to four shillings.]—­a month.  She is very accomplished, thoroughly understands commercial writing, and has at her fingers’-ends more than two thousand characters of learned writing.  In a poetical competition she gained the first prize with a sonnet composed in praise of ’the blossoms of the blackthorn hedges seen in the dew of early morning.’  Only, she is not very pretty:  one of her eyes is smaller than the other, and she has a hole in her cheek, resulting from an illness of her childhood.”

“Oh, no! on no account that one!  Let us seek among a less distinguished class of young persons, but without scars.  And how about those on the other side of the screen, in those fine gold-embroidered dresses?  For instance, the dancer with the spectre mask, Monsieur Kangourou? or again she who sings in so dulcet a strain and has such a charming nape to her neck?”