too, poor little _mousko_. So we must send a message to
Madame Renoncule, that she may not be uneasy about him, and as there
will soon not be a living creature on the footpaths of Diou-djen-dji
to laugh at us, we will take it in turn, Yves and I, to carry him on
our back, all the way up that climb in the darkness.

* * * * *

And here am I, who did not wish to return this way to-night, dragging
a mousme by the hand, actually carrying an extra burden in the shape
of a _mousko_ on my back. What an irony of fate!

As I had expected, all our shutters and doors are closed, bolted and
barred; no one expects us, and we have to make a prodigious noise at
the door. Chrysantheme sets to work and calls with all her might:

"Ho! Oume-San-an-an-an!" (In English: "Hi! Madame Pru-u-u-u-une!")

These intonations in her little voice are unknown to me; her longdrawn
call in the echoing darkness of midnight has so strange an accent,
something so unexpected and wild, that it impresses me with a dismal
feeling of far-off exile.

At last Madame Prune appears to open the door to us, only half awake
and much astonished; by way of a night-cap she wears a monstrous
cotton turban, on the blue ground of which a few white storks are
playfully disporting themselves. Holding in the tips of her fingers
with an affectation of graceful fright, the long stalk of her
beflowered lantern, she gazes intently into our faces, one after
another, to assure herself of our identity; but the poor old lady
cannot get over the _mousko_ I am carrying.

XXXVII

At first it was only to Chrysantheme's guitar that I listened with
pleasure: now I am beginning to like her singing also.

She has nothing of the theatrical, or the deep assumed voice of the
virtuoso; on the contrary, her notes, always very high, are soft,
thin, and plaintive.

She will often teach Oyouki some romance, slow and dreamy, which she
has composed, or which comes back to her mind. Then they both astonish
me, for on their well-tuned guitars they will search out
accompaniments in parts, and try again each time that the chords are
not perfectly true to their ear, without ever losing themselves in the
confusion of these dissonant harmonies, always weird and always
melancholy.

Generally, while their music is going on, I am writing in the
verandah, with the superb stretched out in front of me. I write,
seated on a mat on the floor and leaning upon a litt