mplore you," sings Madame Prune, "O Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami,
royal power! Cease not to protect your faithful people, who are ready to
sacrifice themselves for their country. Grant that I may become as holy
as yourself, and drive from my mind all dark thoughts. I am a coward and
a sinner: purge me from my cowardice and sinfulness, even as the north
wind drives the dust into the sea. Wash me clean from all my iniquities,
as one washes away uncleanness in the river of Kamo. Make me the richest
woman in the world. I believe in your glory, which shall be spread over
the whole earth, and illuminate it for ever for my happiness. Grant me
the continued good health of my family, and above all, my own, who, O
Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami! do worship and adore you, and only you, etc., etc."

Here follow all the emperors, all the spirits, and the interminable list
of ancestors.

In her trembling old woman's falsetto, Madame Prune sings all this,
without omitting anything, at a pace which almost takes away her breath.

And very strange it is to hear: at length it seems hardly a human voice;
it sounds like a series of magic formulas, unwinding themselves from an
inexhaustible roller, and escaping to take flight through the air. By
its very weirdness, and by the persistency of its incantation, it ends
by producing in my half-awakened brain an almost religious impression.

Every day I wake to the sound of this Shintoist litany chanted
beneath me, vibrating through the exquisite clearness of the summer
mornings--while our night-lamps burn low before the smiling Buddha,
while the eternal sun, hardly risen, already sends through the cracks of
our wooden panels its bright rays, which dart like golden arrows through
our darkened dwelling and our blue gauze tent.

This is the moment at which I must rise, descend hurriedly to the sea by
grassy footpaths all wet with dew, and so regain my ship.

Alas! in the days gone by, it was the cry of the muezzin which used
to awaken me in the dark winter mornings in faraway, night-shrouded
Stamboul.

CHAPTER XXVIII. A DOLL'S CORRESPONDENCE

Chrysantheme has brought but few things with her, knowing that our
domestic life would probably be brief.

She has placed her gowns and her fine sashes in little closed recesses,
hidden in one of the walls of our apartment (the north wall, the only
one of the four which can not be taken to pieces). The doors of
these niches are white paper panels; the standing shelv