out of toy
kettles, or a sip of 'saki'--(a spirit made from rice which it is the
custom to serve hot, in elegantly shaped vases, long-necked like a
heron's throat).

Several mousmes execute, one after another, improvisations on
the 'chamecen'. Others sing in sharp, high voices, hopping about
continually, like cicalas in delirium.

Madame Prune, no longer able to make a mystery of the long-pent
up feelings that agitate her, pays me the most marked and tender
attentions, and begs my acceptance of a quantity of little souvenirs: an
image, a little vase, a little porcelain goddess of the moon in Satsuma
ware, a marvellously grotesque ivory figure;--I tremblingly follow her
into the dark corners whither she calls me to give me these presents in
tete-a-tete.

About nine o'clock, with a silken rustling, arrive the three geishas in
vogue in Nagasaki: Mesdemoiselles Purete, Orange, and Printemps, whom I
have hired at four dollars each--an enormous price in this country.

These three geishas are indeed the very same little creatures I heard
singing on the rainy day of my arrival, through the thin panelling of
the Garden of Flowers. But as I have now become thoroughly Japanized,
today they appear to me more diminutive, less outlandish, and in no way
mysterious. I treat them rather as dancers that I have hired, and the
idea that I ever had thought of marrying one of them now makes me shrug
my shoulders--as it formerly made M. Kangourou.

The excessive heat caused by the respiration of the mousmes and the
burning lamps, brings out the perfume of the lotus, which fills the
heavy-laden atmosphere; and the scent of camellia-oil, which the ladies
use in profusion to make their hair glisten, is also strong in the room.

Mademoiselle Orange, the youngest geisha, tiny and dainty, her lips
outlined with gilt paint, executes some delightful steps, donning the
most extraordinary wigs and masks of wood or cardboard. She has masks
imitating old, noble ladies which are valuable works of art, signed by
well-known artists. She has also magnificent long robes, fashioned in
the old style, with trains trimmed at the bottom with thick pads,
in order to give to the movements of the costume something rigid and
unnatural which, however, is becoming.

Now the soft balmy breezes blow through the room, from one veranda to
the other, making the flames of the lamps flicker. They scatter the
lotus flowers faded by the artificial heat, which, falling in