Chapters 43-44 Summary

When Hervé Joncour arrives in Japan at his regular rendezvous, no one comes to meet him. After waiting for five days, Joncour wanders around until he stumbles on the location of Hara Kei's village. It is burned to the ground. It looks like the end of the world.

Joncour sits for three hours among the ruins of the town, unable to come to terms with the scope of this disaster: he has no silkworm eggs and, even if he did, he has spent so much time in Japan that he risks not being able to bring them home before they hatched (and became useless for silk production). A boy appears carrying the glove that Joncour had dropped on a pile of clothes on the shore of the lake during his second visit to Hara Kei. Joncour claims the glove and identifies...