e.

Chrysantheme squats like a gipsy before a certain square box, made of
red wood, which contains a little tobacco-jar, a little porcelain stove
full of hot embers, and finally a little bamboo pot serving at the same
time as ash-tray and cuspidor. (Madame Prune's smoking-box downstairs,
and every smoking-box in Japan, is exactly the same, and contains
precisely the same objects, arranged in precisely the same manner; and
wherever it may be, whether in the house of the rich or the poor, it
always lies about somewhere on the floor.)

The word "pipe" is at once too trivial and too big to be applied to
this delicate silver tube, which is perfectly straight and at the end
of which, in a microscopic receptacle, is placed one pinch of golden
tobacco, chopped finer than silken thread.

Two puffs, or at most three; it lasts scarcely a few seconds, and the
pipe is finished. Then tap, tap, tap, tap, the little tube is struck
smartly against the edge of the smoking-box to knock out the ashes,
which never will fall; and this tapping, heard everywhere, in every
house, at every hour of the day or night, quick and droll as
the scratchings of a monkey, is in Japan one of the noises most
characteristic of human life.

"Anata nominase!" ("You must smoke too!") says Chrysantheme.

Having again filled the tiresome little pipe, she puts the silver
tube to my lips with a bow. Courtesy forbids my refusal; but I find it
detestably bitter.

Before laying myself down under the blue mosquito-net, I open two of the
panels in the room, one on the side of the silent and deserted footpath,
the other on the garden side, overlooking the terraces, so that the
night air may breathe upon us, even at the risk of bringing the company
of some belated cockchafer, or more giddy moth.

Our wooden house, with its thin old walls, vibrates at night like a
great dry violin, and the slightest noises have a startling resonance.

Beneath the veranda are hung two little AEolian harps, which, at the
least ruffle of the breeze running through their blades of grass, emit
a gentle tinkling sound, like the harmonious murmur of a brook; outside,
to the very farthest limits of the distance, the cicalas continue their
sonorous and never-ending concert; over our heads, on the black roof, is
heard passing, like a witch's sabbath, the raging battle, to the death,
of cats, rats, and owls.

Presently, when in the early dawn a fresher breeze, mounting upward from
the sea