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 kept up by constant scrubbings of soap and water. The posts and
beams of the framework are varied by the most fanciful taste: some are
cut in precise geometrical forms; others artificially twisted,
imitating trunks of old trees covered with tropical creepers.
Everywhere little hiding-places, little nooks, little closets
concealed in the most ingenious and unexpected manner under the
immaculate uniformity of the white paper panels.

I cannot help smiling when I think of some of the so-called _Japanese_
drawing-rooms, overcrowded with knick-knacks and curios and hung with
coarse gold embroideries on exported satins, of our Parisian fine
ladies. I would advise those persons to come and look at the houses of
people of taste out here; to visit the white solitudes of the palaces
at Yeddo. In France we have works of art in order to enjoy them; here
they possess them merely to ticket them and lock them up carefully in
a kind of mysterious underground room shut in by iron gratings called
a _godoun_. On rare occasions, only to honor some visitor of
distinction, do they open this impenetrable depositary. The true
Japanese manner of understanding luxury consists in a scrupulous and
indeed almost excessive cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork;
an appearance of extreme simplicity, and an incredible nicety in the
most infinitesimal details.

My mother-in-law seems to be really a very nice woman, and were it not
for the insurmountable feeling of spleen the sight of her garden
produces on me, I would often go and see her. She has nothing in
common with the mammas of Jonquille, Campanule or Touki: she is vastly
their superior; and then I can see that she has been very good-looking
and stylish. Her past life puzzles me; but in my position as a
son-in-law, good manners prevent my making further inquiries.

Some assert that she was formerly a celebrated guecha in Yeddo, who
lost public favor by her folly in becoming a mother. This would
account for her daughter's talent on the guitar; she had probably
herself taught her the touch and style of the Conservatory.

Since the birth of Chrysantheme (her eldest child and first cause of
this loss of favor), my mother-in-law, an expansive although
distinguished nature, h