With many affectations, M. Sucre has dipped the tip of his delicate
paint-brush in Indian ink and traced a couple of charming storks on a
pretty sheet of rice-paper, offering them to me in the most gracious
manner, as a souvenir of himself. They are here, in my cabin on board,
and whenever I look at them, I can fancy I see M. Sucre tracing them
in an airy manner, with elegant facility.
The saucer in which M. Sucre mixes his ink, is in itself a little gem.
Chiselled out of a piece of jade, it represents a tiny lake with a
carved border imitating rockwork. On this border is a little mama
toad, also in jade, advancing as though to bathe in the little lake in
which M. Sucre carefully keeps a few drops of very dark liquid. The
mama toad has four little baby toads, equally in jade, one perched on
her head, the other three playing about under her.
M. Sucre has painted many a stork in the course of his lifetime, and
he really excels in reproducing groups and duets, if one may so
express it, of this kind of bird. Few Japanese possess the art of
interpreting this subject in a manner at once so rapid and so
tasteful; first he draws the two beaks, then the four claws, then the
backs, the feathers, dash, dash, dash,--with a dozen strokes of his
clever brush, held in his daintily posed hand, it is done, and always
perfectly well done!
M. Kangourou relates, without seeing anything wrong in it whatever,
that formerly this talent was of great service to M. Sucre. It appears
that Madame Prune,--how shall I say such a thing, and who could guess
it now, on beholding so devout and sedate an old lady, with eyebrows
so scrupulously shaven!--however, it appears that Madame Prune used to
receive a great many visits from gentlemen,--gentlemen who always came
alone, and it led to some gossip. Therefore, when Madame Prune was
engaged with one visitor, if a new arrival made his appearance, the
ingenious husband, to make him wait patiently, and to while away the
time in the ante-room, immediately offered to paint him some storks in
a variety of attitudes.
And this is how, in Nagasaki, all the Japanese gentlemen of a certain
age, have in their collections two or three of these little pictures,
for which they are indebted to the delicate and original talent of M.
Sucre.