The old man who keeps the range picks out for her his best arrows tipped with white and red feathers—­and she takes aim with a serious air.  The mark is a circle, traced in the middle of a picture on which is painted, in flat, gray tones, terrifying chimera flying through the clouds.

Chrysantheme is certainly an adroit markswoman, and we admire her as much as she expected.

Then Yves, who is usually clever at all games of skill, wishes to try his luck, and fails.  It is amusing to see her, with her mincing ways and smiles, arrange with the tips of her little fingers the sailor’s broad hands, placing them on the bow and the string in order to teach him the proper manner.  Never have they seemed to get on so well together, Yves and my doll, and I might even feel anxious, were I less sure of my good brother, and if, moreover, it was not a matter of perfect indifference to me.

In the stillness of the garden, amid the balmy peacefulness of these mountains, a loud noise suddenly startles us; a unique, powerful, terrible sound, which is prolonged in infinite metallic vibrations.  It begins again, sounding more appalling:  ‘Boum!’ borne to us by the rising wind.

“Nippon Kane!” exclaims Chrysantheme—­and she again takes up her brightly feathered arrows.  “Nippon Kane (’the Japanese brass’); it is the Japanese brass that is sounding!” It is the monstrous gong of a monastery, situated in a suburb beneath us.  It is powerful indeed, “the Japanese brass”!  When the strokes are ended, when it is no longer heard, a vibration seems to linger among the suspended foliage, and a prolonged quiver runs through the air.

I am obliged to admit that Chrysantheme looks very charming shooting her arrows, her figure well bent back the better to bend her bow; her loose-hanging sleeves caught up to her shoulders, showing the graceful bare arms polished like amber and very much the same color.  Each arrow whistles by with the rustle of a bird’s wing—­then a short, sharp little blow is heard, the target is hit, always.

At nightfall, when Chrysantheme has gone up to Diou-djen-dji, we cross, Yves and I, the European concession, on our way to the ship, to take up our watch till the following day.  The cosmopolitan quarter, exhaling an odor of absinthe, is dressed up with flags, and squibs are being fired off in honor of France.  Long lines of djins pass by, dragging, as fast as their naked legs can carry them, the crew of the ‘Triomphante,’ who are shouting and fanning themselves.  The Marseillaise is heard everywhere; English sailors are singing it, gutturally, with a dull and slow cadence like their own “God Save.”  In all the American bars, grinding organs are hammering it with many an odious variation and flourish, in order to attract our men.