Chrysanthème's meals are something indescribable.
She begins in the morning, when she wakes, by two little green wild
plums pickled in vinegar and rolled in powdered sugar. A cup of tea
completes this almost traditional breakfast of Japan, the very same
Madame Prune is eating downstairs, the same served up to travelers in
the inns.
During the course of the day the feeding is continued by two little
dinners of the drollest composition. They are brought up on a tray of
red lacquer, in microscopic cups with covers, from Madame Prune's
apartment, where they are cooked: a hashed sparrow, a stuffed prawn,
seaweed with a sauce, a salt sweetmeat, a sugared chili. Chrysanthème
tastes a little of all, with dainty pecks and the aid of her little
chopsticks, raising the tips of her fingers with affected grace. At
every dish she makes a face, leaves three parts of it, and dries her
finger-tips after it in apparent disgust.
These menus vary according to the inspiration which may have seized
Madame Prune. But one thing never varies, either in our household or
in any other, neither in the north nor in the south of the Empire, and
that is the dessert and the manner of eating it: after all these
little dishes, which are a mere make-believe, is brought in a wooden
bowl, bound with copper,--an enormous bowl, fit for Gargantua, and
filled to the very brim with rice, plainly cooked in water.
Chrysanthème fills another large bowl from it (sometimes twice,
sometimes three times), darkens its snowy whiteness with a black sauce
flavored with fish which is contained in a delicately shaped blue
cruet, mixes it all together, carries the bowl to her lips, and crams
down all the rice, shoveling it with her two chopsticks into her very
throat. Next the little cups and covers are picked up, as well as the
tiniest crumb that may have fallen upon the white mats, the
irreproachable purity of which nothing is allowed to tarnish. And so
ends the dinner.