In the midst of the calm and silence of the night,
I strove to recall my poignant impressions of Stamboul;
but alas, I strove in vain, they would not return
to me in this strange, far-off world. Through
the transparent blue gauze appeared my little Japanese,
as she lay in her somber night-dress with all the
fantastic grace of her country, the nape of her neck
resting on its wooden block, and her hair arranged
in large shiny bows. Her amber-colored arms,
pretty and delicate, emerged, bare up to the shoulders,
from her wide sleeves.
“What can those mice on the roof have done to
him?” thought Chrysantheme. Of course she
could not understand. In a coaxing manner, like
a playful kitten, she glanced at me with her half-closed
eyes, inquiring why I did not come back to sleep,—and
I returned to my place by her side.
It is the National Fete day of France. In Nagasaki
roadstead, all the ships are dressed out with flags,
and salutes are firing in our honor.
Alas! All day long, I cannot help thinking of
that last fourteenth of July, spent in the deep calm
and stillness of my old home, the door closed to all
intruders, while the gay crowd roared outside; there
I had remained till evening, seated on a bench, shaded
by a trellis covered with honeysuckle, where in the
bye-gone days of my childhood’s summers, I used
to settle myself with my copybooks and pretend to
learn my lessons. Oh! those days when I was supposed
to learn my lessons: how my thoughts used to
rove,—what voyages, what distant lands,
what tropical forests did I not behold in my dreams!
At that time, near the garden bench, in some of the
crevices in the stone wall, there dwelt many a big
ugly black spider ever on the watch, peeping out of
his nook ready to pounce upon any giddy fly or wandering
centipede. One of my amusements consisted in tickling
the spiders gently, very gently, with a blade of grass
or a cherry stalk in their holes. Mystified,
they would rush out, fancying they had to deal with
some sort of prey, whilst I would rapidly draw back
my hand in disgust. Well, last year, on that
fourteenth of July, as I recalled my days of Latin
themes and translations, now forever flown, and this
game of boyish days, I actually recognized the very
same spiders (or at least their daughters), lying
in wait in the very same holes. Gazing at them
and at the tufts of grass and moss around me, a thousand
memories of those summers of my early life welled up
within me, memories which for years past had lain
slumbering under this old wall, sheltered by the ivy
boughs. While all that is ourselves perpetually
changes and passes away, the constancy with which Nature
repeats, always in the same manner, her most infinitesimal
details, seems a wonderful mystery; the same peculiar
species of moss grow afresh for centuries on precisely
the same spot, and the same little insects each summer
do the same thing in the same place.
