touches mine, confirm the suspicions that her look of dismay a few
moments ago awoke within me: evidently my physical charms speak to her
imagination, which in spite of years has remained full of romance! I
shall leave with the regret of having understood her too late!!

If the ladies are satisfied with my sketch, I am far from being so. I
have put everything in its place most exactly, but as a whole, it has
an ordinary, indifferent, French look which does not suit. The
sentiment is not given, and I almost wonder whether I should not have
done better in falsifying the perspective,--Japanese style--and
exaggerating to the very utmost the already abnormal outlines of what
I see before me. And then the pictured dwelling lacks the fragile look
and its sonority, that reminds one of a dry violin. In the penciled
delineation of the woodwork, the minute delicacy with which it is
wrought is wanting; neither have I been able to render the extreme
antiquity, the perfect cleanliness, nor the vibrating song of the
cicalas that seems to have been stored away within it, in its
parched-up fibers, during some hundreds of summers. It does not either
convey the impression this place gives of being in a far-off suburb,
perched aloft among trees, above the drollest of towns. No, all this
cannot be drawn, cannot be expressed, but remains undemonstrable,
undefinable.

Having sent out our invitations, we shall in spite of everything, give
our tea-party this evening,--a parting tea, therefore, in which we
will display as much pomp as possible. It is, moreover, rather my
custom to wind up my exotic existences with a fete; in other countries
I have done the same.

Besides our usual set, we shall have my mother-in-law, my relatives,
and all the mousmes of the neighborhood. But, by an extra Japanese
refinement, we shall not admit a single European friend,--not even the
_amazingly tall_ one. Yves alone shall be admitted, and even he shall
be hidden away in a corner behind some flowers and works of art.

In the last glimmer of twilight, by the first twinkling star, the
ladies, with many charming curtseys, make their appearance. Our house
is soon full of the little crouching women, with their tiny slit eyes
vaguely smiling; their beautifully dressed hair shining like polished
ebony; their fragile bodies lost in the many folds or the exaggerated
wide garments, that gape as if ready to drop from their little
tapering backs and reveal the exquisite