This sounds very pretty, and written down looks very well.  In reality, however, it is not so; something, I know not what, is lacking, and everything is very paltry.  In other lands, in the delightful isles of Oceania, in the old, lifeless quarters of Stamboul, it seemed as if mere words could never express all I felt, and I struggled vainly against my own inability to render, in human language, the penetrating charm surrounding me.

Here, on the contrary, words exact and truthful in themselves seem always too thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it unduly.  I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some wretchedly trivial and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to consider my home in a serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M. Kangourou rises before me—­the matrimonial agent, to whom I am indebted for my happiness.

CHAPTER IX

MY PLAYTHING

July 12th

Yves visits us whenever he is free, in the evening at five o’clock, after his duties on board are fulfilled.

He is our only European visitor, and, with the exception of a few civilities and cups of tea, exchanged with our neighbors, we lead a very retired life.  Only in the evenings, winding our way through the steep, narrow streets and carrying our lanterns at the end of short sticks, we go down to Nagasaki in search of amusement at the theatres, at the tea-houses, or in the bazaars.

Yves treats my wife as if she were a plaything, and continually assures me that she is charming.

I find her as exasperating as the cicalas on my roof; and when I am alone at home, side by side with this little creature twanging the strings of her long-necked guitar, facing this marvellous panorama of pagodas and mountains, I am overcome by sadness almost to tears.

CHAPTER X

NOCTURNAL TERRORS

July 13th.

Last night, as we reposed under the Japanese roof of Diou-djen-dji—­the thin old wooden roof scorched by a hundred years of sunshine, vibrating at the least sound, like the stretched-out parchment of a tomtom—­in the silence which prevails at two o’clock in the morning, we heard overhead a sound like a regular wild huntsman’s chase passing at full gallop.

“Nidzoumi!” ("The mice!”) said Chrysantheme.

Suddenly the word brings back to my mind yet another phrase, spoken in a very different language, in a country far away from here:  “Setchan!” a word heard elsewhere, a word that has likewise been whispered in my ear by a woman’s voice, under similar circumstances, in a moment of nocturnal terror—­“Setchan!” It was during one of our first nights at Stamboul spent under the mysterious roof of Eyoub, when danger surrounded us on all sides; a noise on the steps of the black staircase had made us tremble, and she also, my dear little Turkish companion, had said to me in her beloved language, “Setchan!” ("the mice!").