awful.

Other sounds of music, wafted to us from the distance, interrupt for a
moment those of our mousmes. From the depths below, in Nagasaki, arises
a sudden noise of gongs and guitars; we rush to the balcony of the
veranda to hear it better.

It is a 'matsouri', a fete, a procession passing through the quarter
which is not so virtuous as our own, so our mousmes tell us, with a
disdainful toss of the head. Nevertheless, from the heights on which
we dwell, seen thus in a bird's-eye view, by the uncertain light of the
stars, this district has a singularly chaste air, and the concert going
on therein, purified in its ascent from the depths of the abyss to
our lofty altitudes, reaches us confusedly, a smothered, enchanted,
enchanting sound.

Then it diminishes, and dies away into silence.

The two little friends return to their seats on the mats, and once more
take up their melancholy duet. An orchestra, discreetly subdued but
innumerable, of crickets and cicalas, accompanies them in an unceasing
tremolo--the immense, far-reaching tremolo, which, gentle and eternal,
never ceases in Japan.

CHAPTER LI. THE LAST DAY

September 17th

At the hour of siesta, a peremptory order arrives to start tomorrow for
China, for Tche-fou (a terrible place, in the gulf of Pekin). Yves comes
to wake me in my cabin to bring me the news.

"I must positively get leave to go on shore this evening," he says,
while I endeavor to shake myself awake, "if it is only to help you to
dismantle and pack up."

He gazes through my port-hole, raising his glance toward the green
summits, in the direction of Diou-djen-dji and our echoing old cottage,
hidden from us by a turn of the mountain.

It is very nice of him to wish to help me in my packing; but I think
he counts also upon saying farewell to his little Japanese friends up
there, and I really can not find fault with that.

He finishes his work, and does in fact obtain leave, without help from
me, to go on shore at five o'clock, after drill and manoeuvres.

As for myself I start at once, in a hired sampan. In the vast flood
of midday sunshine, to the quivering noise of the cicalas, I mount to
Diou-djen-dji.

The paths are solitary, the plants are drooping in the heat.
Here, however, is Madame Jonquille, taking the air in the bright,
grasshoppers' sunshine, sheltering her dainty figure and her charming
face under an enormous paper parasol, a huge circle, closely ribbed and
fantast