Notwithstanding the increased distance, I continue my daily visits to
Diou-djen-dji. When night has fallen, and the four couples who compose
our society have joined us, as well as Yves and the _amazingly tall
friend_,--we descend again into the town, stumbling by lantern light
down the steep stairways and slopes of the old suburb.
This nocturnal stroll is always the same, and accompanied always by
the same amusements: we pause before the same queer stalls, we drink
the same sugared drinks served to us in the same little gardens. But
our troop is often more numerous: to begin with, we chaperon Oyouki
who is confided to our care by her parents; then we have two cousins
of my wife's--pretty little creatures; and lastly friends--guests of
sometimes only ten or twelve years old, little girls of the
neighborhood to whom our mousmés wish to show some politeness.
Oh! what a singular company of tiny beings forms our suite and follows
us into the tea-gardens in the evenings! The most absurd faces, with
sprigs of flowers stuck in the oddest fashion in their comical and
childish heads! One might suppose it was a whole school of mousmés out
for an evening's frolic under our care.
Yves returns with us, when time comes to remount our
hill,--Chrysanthème heaves great sighs like a tired child, and stops
on every step, leaning on our arms.
When we have reached our destination he says good-night, just touches
Chrysanthème's hand, and descending once more, by the slope which
leads to the quays and the shipping, he crosses the roadstead in a
sampan, to get on board the _Triomphante_.
Meantime, we, with the aid of a sort of secret key, open the door of
our garden, where Madame Prune's pots of flowers, ranged in the
darkness, send forth delicious odors in the night air. We cross the
garden by moonlight or starlight, and mount to our own rooms.
If it is very late,--a frequent occurrence,--we find all our wooden
panels drawn and tightly shut by the careful M. Sucre (as a precaution
against thieves), and our apartment is as close and as private as if
it were a real European one.
In this house, when every chink is thus closed, a strange odor mingles
with the musk and the lotus,--an odor essential to Japan, to the
yellow race, belonging to the soil or emanating from the venerable
woodwork; almost an odor of wild beast. The mosquito curtain of dark
blue gauze ready hung for the night, falls from the ceiling with the
air of a mysterious velum. The gilded Buddha smiles eternally at the
night-lamps burning before him; some great moth, a constant frequenter
of the house, which during the day sleeps clinging to our ceiling,
flutters at this hour under the very nose of the god, turning and
flitting round the thin quivering flames. And, motionless on the wall,
its feelers spread out starwise, sleeps some great garden spider,
which one must not kill because it is night. "Hou!" says Chrysanthème
indignantly, pointing it out to me with leveled finger. "Quick! where
is the fan kept for the purpose, wherewith to hunt it out of doors?"
Around us reigns a silence which is almost painful after all the
joyous noises of the town, and all the laughter, now hushed, of our
band of mousmés,--a silence of the country, of some sleeping village.