One amusing recollection comes back to me of that evening.  On our return, we had by mistake turned into a street inhabited by a multitude of ladies of doubtful reputation.  I can still see that big fellow Yves, struggling with a whole band of tiny little ‘mousmes’ of twelve or fifteen years of age, who barely reached up to his waist, and were pulling him by the sleeves, eager to lead him astray.  Astonished and indignant, he repeated, as he extricated himself from their clutches, “Oh, this is too much!” so shocked was he at seeing such mere babies, so young, so tiny, already so brazen and shameless.

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MADAME CHRYSANTHEME

By Pierre Loti

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER XII

Happy families!

July 18th.

By this time, four officers of my ship are married like myself, and inhabiting the slopes of the same suburb.  This arrangement is quite an ordinary occurrence, and is brought about without difficulties, mystery, or danger, through the offices of the same M. Kangourou.

As a matter of course, we are on visiting terms with all these ladies.

First, there is our very merry neighbor Madame Campanule, who is little
Charles N-----’s wife; then Madame Jonquille, who is even merrier than
Campanule, like a young bird, and the daintiest fairy of them all; she
has married X-----, a fair northerner who adores her; they are a
lover-like and inseparable pair, the only one that will probably weep
when the hour of parting comes.  Then Sikou-San with Doctor Y-----; and
lastly the midshipman Z------with the tiny Madame Touki-San, no taller
than a boot:  thirteen years old at the outside, and already a regular
woman, full of her own importance, a petulant little gossip.  In my
childhood I was sometimes taken to the Learned Animals Theatre, and I
remember a certain Madame de Pompadour, a principal role, filled by a
gayly dressed old monkey; Touki-San reminds me of her.

In the evening, all these folk usually come and fetch us for a long processional walk with lighted lanterns.  My wife, more serious, more melancholy, perhaps even more refined, and belonging, I fancy, to a higher class, tries when these friends come to us to play the part of the lady of the house.  It is comical to see the entry of these ill-matched pairs, partners for a day, the ladies, with their disjointed bows, falling on all fours before Chrysantheme, the queen of the establishment.  When we are all assembled, we set out, arm in arm, one behind another, and always carrying at the end of our short sticks little white or red paper lanterns; it is a pretty custom.