easy I feel as to what my fiancee of to-morrow may
be like. Almost pretty, I grant you, you are--in virtue of quaintness,
delicate hands, miniature feet, but ugly, after all, and absurdly small.
You look like little monkeys, like little china ornaments, like I don't
know what. I begin to understand that I have arrived at this house at an
ill-chosen moment. Something is going on which does not concern me, and
I feel that I am in the way.

From the beginning I might have guessed as much, notwithstanding the
excessive politeness of my welcome; for I remember now, that while
they were taking off my boots downstairs, I heard a murmuring chatter
overhead, then a noise of panels moved quickly along their grooves,
evidently to hide from me something not intended for me to see; they
were improvising for me the apartment in which I now am just as in
menageries they make a separate compartment for some beasts when the
public is admitted.

Now I am left alone while my orders are being executed, and I listen
attentively, squatted like a Buddha on my black velvet cushion, in the
midst of the whiteness of the walls and mats.

Behind the paper partitions, feeble voices, seemingly numerous, are
talking in low tones. Then rises the sound of a guitar, and the song of
a woman, plaintive and gentle in the echoing sonority of the bare house,
in the melancholy of the rainy weather.

What one can see through the wide-open veranda is very pretty; I
will admit that it resembles the landscape of a fairytale. There are
admirably wooded mountains, climbing high into the dark and gloomy sky,
and hiding in it the peaks of their summits, and, perched up among the
clouds, is a temple. The atmosphere has that absolute transparency, that
distance and clearness which follows a great fall of rain; but a thick
pall, still heavy with moisture, remains suspended over all, and on the
foliage of the hanging woods still float great flakes of gray fluff,
which remain there, motionless. In the foreground, in front of and
below this almost fantastic landscape, is a miniature garden where two
beautiful white cats are taking the air, amusing themselves by pursuing
each other through the paths of a Lilliputian labyrinth, shaking the wet
sand from their paws. The garden is as conventional as possible: not
a flower, but little rocks, little lakes, dwarf trees cut in grotesque
fashion; all this is not natural, but it is most ingeniously arranged,
so green, so full of