When night closes in, we light two hanging lamps of a religious
character, which burn till morn, before our gilded idol.
We sleep on the floor, on a thin cotton mattress, which is unfolded
and laid out over our white mats. Chrysanthème's pillow is a little
wooden block, scooped out to fit exactly the nape of the neck, without
disturbing the elaborate head-dress, which must never be taken down;
the pretty black hair I shall probably never see undone. My pillow, a
Chinese model, is a kind of little square drum covered over with
serpent skin.
We sleep under a gauze mosquito net of somber greenish blue, dark as
the shades of night, stretched out on an orange-colored ribbon. (These
are the traditional colors, and all the respectable families of
Nagaski possess a similar gauze.) It envelops us like a tent; the
mosquitoes and the night-moths dance around it.
* * * * *
This sounds very pretty, and written down looks very well. In reality,
however, it is not so; something, I know not what, is wanting, and it
is all very paltry. In other lands, in the delightful isles of
Oceania, in the old lifeless quarters of Stamboul, it seemed as if
mere words could never express all I felt, and I vainly struggled
against my own incompetence to render, in human language, the
penetrating charm surrounding me.
Here, on the contrary, words exact and truthful in themselves seem
always too thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it
unduly. I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some
wretchedly trivial and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to
consider my home in a serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M.
Kangourou rises up before me, the matrimonial agent, to whom I am
indebted for my happiness.