* * * *
*
To give a faithful account of those evenings, would
require a more affected style than our own; and some
kind of graphic sign would have also to be expressly
invented and scattered at haphazard amongst the words,
indicating the moment at which the reader should laugh,—rather
a forced laugh, perhaps, but amiable and gracious.
The evening at an end; it is time to return up there.
Oh! that street, that road, that we must clamber up
every evening, under the starlit sky, or the heavy
thunder-clouds, dragging by the hand our drowsy mousme
in order to regain our home perched on high half-way
up the hill, where our bed of matting awaits us.
The cleverest amongst us has been Louis de S——.
Having formerly inhabited Japan, and made a marriage
Japan fashion there, he is now satisfied to remain
the friend of our wives, of whom he has become the
Komodachi taksan takai, the very tall friend
(as they say on account of his excessive height and
slenderness). Talking Japanese more freely than
we can, he is their confidential adviser, disturbs
or reconciles at will our households, and has infinite
amusement at our expense.
This very tall friend of our wives enjoys all
the fun that these little creatures can give him,
without any of the worries of domestic life.
With brother Yves, and little Oyouki (the daughter
of Madame Prune, my landlady,) he makes up our incongruous
party.
M. Sucre and Madame Prune,[D] my landlord and wife,
two perfectly unique personages but recently escaped
from the panel of some screen, live below us on the
ground floor; and very old they seem to have this
daughter of fifteen, Oyouki, who is Chrysantheme’s
inseparable friend.
[Footnote D: In Japanese: Sato-san
and Oume-San.]
Both of them are entirely absorbed in the practices
of Shintoist devotion: perpetually on their knees
before their family altar, perpetually occupied in
murmuring their lengthy orisons to the Spirits, and
clapping their hands from time to time to recall around
them the inattentive essences floating in the atmosphere;—in
their spare moments they cultivate in little pots
of gayly-painted earthenware, dwarf shrubs and unheard-of
flowers which smell deliciously in the evening.
M. Sucre is taciturn, dislikes society, looks like
a mummy in his blue cotton dress. He writes a
great deal, (his memoirs, I fancy) with a paint-brush
held in his finger-tips, on long strips of rice-paper
of a faint gray tint.
Madame Prune is eagerly attentive, obsequious and
rapacious; her eye-brows are closely shaven, her teeth
carefully lacquered with black as befits a lady of
gentility, and at all and no matter what hours, she
appears on all fours at the entrance of our apartment,
to offer us her services.
