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 sombre night-robe 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-tinted 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.
A GAME OF ARCHERY
July 14th.
This is the National Fete day of France. In Nagasaki
Harbor, all the ships are adorned with flags, and
salutes are fired in our honor.
Alas! All day long, I can not help thinking of
that last fourteenth of July, spent in the deep calm
and quiet of my old home, the door shut against all
intruders, while the gay crowd roared outside; there
I had remained till evening, seated on a bench, shaded
by an arbor covered with honeysuckle, where, in the
bygone 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, dwelt many a big, ugly,
black spider always on the alert, 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 webs. Mystified,
they would rush out, fancying they had to deal with
some sort of prey, while 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 places. 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 grows afresh for centuries
on precisely the same spot, and the same little insects
each summer do the same thing in the same place.
