At the outer gate I stop for the last adieu:
the little sad pout has reappeared, more accentuated
than ever on Chrysantheme’s face; it is the
right thing, it is correct, and I should feel offended
now were it absent.
Well, little mousme, let us part good friends; one
last kiss even, if you like. I took you to amuse
me; you have not perhaps succeeded very well, but
after all you have done what you could: given
me your little face, your little curtseys, your little
music; in short, you have been pleasant enough in
your Japanese way. And who knows, perchance I
may yet think of you sometimes when I recall this glorious
summer, these pretty quaint gardens, and the ceaseless
concert of the cicales.
She prostrates herself on the threshold of the door,
her forehead against the ground, and remains in this
attitude of superlatively polite salute as long as
I am in sight, while I go down the pathway by which
I am to disappear for ever.
As the distance between us increases, I turn once
or twice to look at her again; but it is a mere civility,
and meant to return as it deserves her grand final
salutation.
On entering the town, at the turn of the principal
street, I have the good luck to meet No. 415, my poor
relation. I was just at that moment in want of
a speedy djin, and I at once get into his vehicle;
besides, it will be an alleviation to my feelings,
in this hour of departure, to take my last drive in
company with a member of my family.
Unaccustomed as I was to be out of doors during the
hours of siesta, I had never yet seen the streets
of the town thus overwhelmed by the sunshine, thus
deserted in the silence and solitary brilliancy peculiar
to all hot countries.
In front of all the shops hang white shades, adorned
here and there with slight designs in black, in the
quaintness of which lurks I know not what,—something
mysterious: dragons, emblems, symbolical figures
The sky is too glaring; the light crude, implacable;
never has this old town of Nagasaki appeared to me
so old, so worm-eaten, so bald, notwithstanding all
its veneer of new papers and gaudy paintings.
These little wooden houses, of such marvelous cleanly
whiteness inside, are black outside, time-worn, disjointed
and grimacing. When one looks closely,
this grimace is to be found everywhere: in the
hideous masks laughing in the shop fronts of the innumerable
curio-shops; in the grotesque figures, the playthings,
the idols, cruel, suspicious mad;—it is
even found in the buildings: in the friezes of
the religious porticos, in the roofs of the thousand
pagodas; of which the angles and gable-ends writhe
and twist like the yet dangerous remains of ancient
and malignant beasts.
