Consular residences, custom-house offices, manufactories;
a dry dock in which a Russian frigate was lying; on
the heights the large European concession, sprinkled
with villas, and on the quays, American bars for the
sailors. Farther off, it is true, far away behind
these commonplace objects, in the very depths of the
vast green valley, peered thousands upon thousands
of tiny black houses, a tangled mass of curious appearance,
from which here and there emerged some higher, dark
red, painted roofs, probably the true old Japanese
Nagasaki, which still exists. And in those quarters—who
knows?—there may be, lurking behind a paper
screen, some affected, cat’s-eyed little woman,
whom perhaps in two or three days (having no time
to lose) I shall marry! But no, the picture painted
by my fancy has faded. I can no longer see this
little creature in my mind’s eye; the sellers
of the white mice have blurred her image; I fear now,
lest she should be like them.
At nightfall the decks were suddenly cleared as by
enchantment; in a second they had shut up their boxes,
folded their sliding screens and their trick fans,
and, humbly bowing to each of us, the little men and
little women disappeared.
Slowly, as the shades of night closed around us, mingling
all things in the bluish darkness, Japan became once
more, little by little, a fairy-like and enchanted
country. The great mountains, now black, were
mirrored and doubled in the still water at their feet,
reflecting therein their sharply reversed outlines,
and presenting the mirage of fearful precipices, over
which we seemed to hang. The stars also were reversed
in their order, making, in the depths of the imaginary
abyss, a sprinkling of tiny phosphorescent lights.
Then all Nagasaki became profusely illuminated, sparkling
with multitudes of lanterns: the smallest suburb,
the smallest village was lighted up; the tiniest but
perched up among the trees, which in the daytime was
invisible, threw out its little glowworm glimmer.
Soon there were innumerable lights all over the country
on all the shores of the bay, from top to bottom of
the mountains; myriads of glowing fires shone out
in the darkness, conveying the impression of a vast
capital rising around us in one bewildering amphitheatre.
Beneath, in the silent waters, another town, also
illuminated, seemed to descend into the depths of the
abyss. The night was balmy, pure, delicious; the
atmosphere laden with the perfume of flowers came
wafted to us from the mountains. From the tea-houses
and other nocturnal resorts, the sound of guitars reached
our ears, seeming in the distance the sweetest of
music. And the whirr of the cicalas—which,
in Japan, is one of the continuous noises of life,
and which in a few days we shall no longer even be
aware of, so completely is it the background and foundation
of all other terrestrial sounds—was sonorous,
incessant, softly monotonous, like the murmur of a
waterfall.
CHAPTER III
Copyrights
Madame Chrysantheme — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
