“My dear creature, they are letters from my
female friends.”
Oh! those friends of Chrysantheme, what funny little
faces they have! That same box contains their
portraits, their photographs stuck on visiting cards,
which are printed on the back with the name of Uyeno,
the fashionable photographer in Nagasaki,—little
creatures fit only to figure daintily on painted fans,
and who have striven to assume a dignified attitude
when once their necks have been placed in the head-rest
and they have been told: “Now don’t
move!”
It would really amuse me to read her friends’
letters,—and above all my mousme’s
answers.
August 10th.
This evening it rained heavily, and the night was
thick and black. At about ten o’clock,
on our return from one of the fashionable tea-houses
we constantly frequent, we arrived,—Yves,
Chrysantheme and myself,—at the certain
familiar angle of the principal street, the certain
turn where we must take leave of the lights and noises
of the town, to clamber up the black steps and steep
lanes which lead to our home at Diou-djen-dji.
There, before beginning our ascension, we must first
buy lanterns from an old trades-woman called Madame
Tres-Propre,[E] whose faithful customers we are.
It is amazing what a quantity of these paper lanterns
we consume. They are invariably decorated in the
same way, with painted night-moths or bats; fastened
to the ceiling at the further end of the shop, they
hang in enormous clusters, and the old woman, seeing
us arrive, gets upon a table to take them down.
Gray or red are our usual choice; Madame Tres-Propre
knows our preferences and leaves the green or blue
lanterns aside. But it is always hard work to
unhook one, on account of the little short sticks by
which they are held, and the strings by which they
are tied getting entangled together. In an exaggerated
pantomime, Madame Tres-Propre expresses her despair
at wasting so much of our valuable time: oh! if
it only depended on her personal efforts! but ah,
for the natural perversity of inanimate things which
have no consideration for human dignity. With
monkeyish antics, she even deems it her duty to threaten
the lanterns and shake her fist at these inextricably
tangled strings which have the presumption to delay
us. It is all very well, but we know this maneuver
by heart; and if the old lady loses patience, so do
we. Chrysantheme, who is half asleep, is seized
with a fit of kitten-like yawning which she does not
even trouble to hide behind her hand, and which appears
to be endless. She pulls a very long face, at
the thought of the steep hill we must struggle up to-night
through the pelting rain.
[Footnote E: In Japanese: O Sei-San.]
I have the same feeling, and am thoroughly annoyed.
To what purpose, good heavens, do I clamber up every
evening to that suburb, when it offers me no attraction
whatever?
