_August 10th_.
This evening it rained heavily, and the night was thick and black. At
about ten o'clock, on our return from one of the fashionable
tea-houses we constantly frequent, we arrived,--Yves, Chrysanthème and
myself,--at the certain familiar angle of the principal street, the
certain turn where we must take leave of the lights and noises of the
town, to clamber up the black steps and steep lanes which lead to our
home at Diou-djen-dji.
There, before beginning our ascension, we must first buy lanterns from
an old trades-woman called Madame Très-Propre,[E] whose faithful
customers we are. It is amazing what a quantity of these paper
lanterns we consume. They are invariably decorated in the same way,
with painted night-moths or bats; fastened to the ceiling at the
further end of the shop, they hang in enormous clusters, and the old
woman, seeing us arrive, gets upon a table to take them down. Gray or
red are our usual choice; Madame Très-Propre knows our preferences and
leaves the green or blue lanterns aside. But it is always hard work to
unhook one, on account of the little short sticks by which they are
held, and the strings by which they are tied getting entangled
together. In an exaggerated pantomime, Madame Très-Propre expresses
her despair at wasting so much of our valuable time: oh! if it only
depended on her personal efforts! but ah, for the natural perversity
of inanimate things which have no consideration for human dignity.
With monkeyish antics, she even deems it her duty to threaten the
lanterns and shake her fist at these inextricably tangled strings
which have the presumption to delay us. It is all very well, but we
know this maneuver by heart; and if the old lady loses patience, so do
we. Chrysanthème, who is half asleep, is seized with a fit of
kitten-like yawning which she does not even trouble to hide behind
her hand, and which appears to be endless. She pulls a very long face,
at the thought of the steep hill we must struggle up to-night through
the pelting rain.
[Footnote E: In Japanese: _O Séï-San_.]