l.

Needless to say, the cicalas around us keep up their perpetual sonorous
chirping. The mountain smells delicious. The atmosphere, the dawning
day, the infantine grace of these little girls in their long frocks and
shiny coiffures-all is redundant with freshness and youth. The flowers
and grasses on which we tread sparkle with dewdrops, exhaling a perfume
of freshness. What undying beauty there is, even in Japan, in the fresh
morning hours in the country, and the dawning hours of life!

Besides, I am quite ready to admit the attractiveness of the little
Japanese children; some of them are most fascinating. But how is it
that their charm vanishes so rapidly and is so quickly replaced by the
elderly grimace, the smiling ugliness, the monkeyish face?

CHAPTER XXXV. THROUGH A MICROSCOPE

The small garden of my mother-in-law, Madame Renoncule, is, without
exception, one of the most melancholy spots I have seen in all my
travels through the world.

Oh, the slow, enervating, dull hours spent in idle and diffuse
conversation on the dimly lighted veranda! Oh, the detestable peppered
jam in the tiny pots! In the middle of the town, enclosed by four walls,
is this park of five yards square, with little lakes, little mountains,
and little rocks, where all wears an antiquated appearance, and
everything is covered with a greenish mold from want of sunlight.

Nevertheless, a true feeling for nature has inspired this tiny
representation of a wild spot. The rocks are well placed, the dwarf
cedars, no taller than cabbages, stretch their gnarled boughs over the
valleys in the attitude of giants wearied by the weight of centuries;
and their look of full-grown trees perplexes one and falsifies the
perspective. When from the dark recesses of the apartment one perceives
at a certain distance this diminutive landscape dimly lighted, the
wonder is whether it is all artificial, or whether one is not one's self
the victim of some morbid illusion; and whether it is not indeed a real
country view seen through a distorted vision out of focus, or through
the wrong end of a telescope.

To any one familiar with Japanese life, my mother-in-law's house in
itself reveals a refined nature--complete bareness, two or three screens
placed here and there, a teapot, a vase full of lotus-flowers, and
nothing more. Woodwork devoid of paint or varnish, but carved in most
elaborate and capricious openwork, the whiteness of the pinewood being
preserv