the gleaming flagstones below, rendering everything indistinct and
vague through the misty atmosphere. At times we passed by a lady,
struggling with her skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high
wooden shoes, looking exactly like the figures painted on screens,
tucked up under a gaudily daubed paper umbrella. Or else we passed a
pagoda, where an old granite monster, squatting in the water, seemed
to make a hideous, ferocious grimace at me.

How immense this Nagasaki is! Here had we been running hard for the
last hour, and still it seemed never-ending. It is a flat plain, and
one could never suppose from the offing that so vast a plain could lie
in the recesses of this valley.

It would, however, have been impossible for me to say where I was, or
in what direction we had run; I abandoned my fate to my djin and to my
good luck.

What a steam-engine of a man my djin was! I had been accustomed to the
Chinese runners, but they were nothing by the side of this fellow.
When I part my oil-cloths to peep at anything, he is naturally always
the first object in my foreground: his two naked, brown, muscular
legs, scampering one after the other, splashing all around, and his
bristling hedgehog back bending low in the rain. Do the passers-by,
gazing at this little dripping cart, guess that it contains a suitor
in quest of a bride?

* * * * *

At last my vehicle stops, and my djin, with many smiles and
precautions lest any fresh rivers should stream down my back, lowers
the hood of the cart; there is a break in the storm, and the rain has
ceased. I had not yet seen his face; by exception to the general rule,
he is good-looking;--a young man of about thirty years of age, of
intelligent and strong appearance, and an open countenance. Who could
have foreseen that a few days later this very djin.--But no, I will
not anticipate, and run the risk of throwing beforehand any discredit
on Chrysantheme.

We had therefore reached our destination, and found ourselves at the
foot of a tall overhanging mountain; probably beyond the limits of the
town, in some suburban district. It apparently became necessary to
continue our journey on foot, and climb up an almost perpendicular
narrow path. Around us, a number of small country houses, garden
walls, and high bamboo palisades closed in the view. The green hill
crushed us with its towering height; the heavy, dark clouds lowering
over our heads seemed like a le