hter, and the low-toned interchange of
polite speeches. Then follow lanterns upon lanterns. Never in my
life have I seen so many, so variegated, so complicated, and so
extraordinary.

We follow, drifting with the surging crowd, borne along by it. There
are groups of women of every age, decked out in their smartest clothes,
crowds of mousmes with aigrettes of flowers in their hair, or little
silver topknots like Oyouki--pretty little physiognomies, little, narrow
eyes peeping between their slits like those of new-born kittens, fat,
pale, little cheeks, round, puffed-out, half-opened lips. They are
pretty, nevertheless, these little Nipponese, in their smiles and
childishness.

The men, on the other hand, wear many a pot-hat, pompously added to
the long national robe, and giving thereby a finishing touch to their
cheerful ugliness, resembling nothing so much as dancing monkeys. They
carry boughs in their hands, whole shrubs even, amid the foliage of
which dangle all sorts of curious lanterns in the shapes of imps and
birds.

As we advance in the direction of the temple, the streets become more
noisy and crowded. All along the houses are endless stalls raised
on trestles, displaying sweetmeats of every color, toys, branches of
flowers, nosegays and masks. There are masks everywhere, boxes full of
them, carts full of them; the most popular being the one that represents
the livid and cunning muzzle, contracted as by a deathlike grimace, the
long straight ears and sharp-pointed teeth of the white fox, sacred to
the God of Rice. There are also others symbolic of gods or monsters,
livid, grimacing, convulsed, with wigs and beards of natural hair. All
manner of folk, even children, purchase these horrors, and fasten them
over their faces. Every sort of instrument is for sale, among them many
of those crystal trumpets which sound so strangely--this evening they
are enormous, six feet long at least--and the noise they make is unlike
anything ever heard before: one would say gigantic turkeys were gobbling
amid the crowd, striving to inspire fear.

In the religious amusements of this people it is not possible for us to
penetrate the mysteriously hidden meaning of things; we can not divine
the boundary at which jesting stops and mystic fear steps in. These
customs, these symbols, these masks, all that tradition and atavism have
jumbled together in the Japanese brain, proceed from sources utterly
dark and unknown to us; even the