That, the first storm of wind my eyes ever beheld
sweeping over the landscape, blew in just the opposite
quarter of the world,—and many years have
rapidly passed over that memory,—since then
the best part of my life has been spent.
I refer too often, I fancy, to my childhood; I am
foolishly fond of it. But it seems to me that
then only did I truly experience sensations or impressions;
the smallest trifles I then saw or heard were full
of deep and hidden meaning, recalling past images out
of oblivion, and reawakening memories of prior existence;
or else they were presentiments of existences to come,
future incarnations in the land of dreams, expectations
of wondrous marvels that life and the world held in
store for me,—for later, no doubt, when
I should be grown up. Well, I have grown up,
and have found nothing that answered to my undefinable
expectations; on the contrary, all has narrowed and
darkened around me, my vague recollections of the past
have become blurred, the horizons before me have slowly
closed in and become full of a gray darkness.
Soon will my time come to return to eternal rest,
and I shall leave this world without having understood
the mysterious wherefore of these mirages of my childhood;
I shall bear away with me a lingering regret, of I
know not what lost home that I have failed to find,
of the unknown beings ardently longed for, whom, alas,
I have never embraced.
XXXIII.
With many affectations, M. Sucre has dipped the tip
of his delicate paint-brush in Indian ink and traced
a couple of charming storks on a pretty sheet of rice-paper,
offering them to me in the most gracious manner, as
a souvenir of himself. They are here, in my cabin
on board, and whenever I look at them, I can fancy
I see M. Sucre tracing them in an airy manner, with
elegant facility.
The saucer in which M. Sucre mixes his ink, is in
itself a little gem. Chiselled out of a piece
of jade, it represents a tiny lake with a carved border
imitating rockwork. On this border is a little
mama toad, also in jade, advancing as though to bathe
in the little lake in which M. Sucre carefully keeps
a few drops of very dark liquid. The mama toad
has four little baby toads, equally in jade, one perched
on her head, the other three playing about under her.
M. Sucre has painted many a stork in the course of
his lifetime, and he really excels in reproducing
groups and duets, if one may so express it, of this
kind of bird. Few Japanese possess the art of
interpreting this subject in a manner at once so rapid
and so tasteful; first he draws the two beaks, then
the four claws, then the backs, the feathers, dash,
dash, dash,—with a dozen strokes of his
clever brush, held in his daintily posed hand, it is
done, and always perfectly well done!
Copyrights
Madame Chrysantheme from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
