range, the youngest guecha, tiny and dainty, her lips outlined
with gilt paint, executes some delightful steps, donning the most
extraordinary wigs and masks in wood or cardboard. She has masks
imitating old noble ladies which are valuable works of art, signed by
well-known artists. She has also magnificent long robes, fashioned in
the old style, and trains trimmed at the bottom with thick pads, in
order to give to the movements of the costume something rigid and
unnatural which, however, is becoming.

Now the soft balmy breezes blow through the room, from one verandah to
the other, making the flames of the lamps flicker. They scatter the
lotus flowers faded by the artificial heat, which, falling in pieces
from every vase, sprinkle the guests with their pollen and large pink
petals, looking like bits of broken opal-colored glass.

The sensational piece, reserved for the end, is a trio on the
_chamecen_, long and monotonous, that the guechas perform as a rapid
_pizzicato_ on the highest strings, very sharply struck. It sounds
like the very quintescence, the paraphrase, the exasperation if I may
so call it, of the eternal buzz of insects, which issues from the
trees, old roofs, old walls, from everything in fact, and which is the
ground-work of all Japanese sounds.

Half-past ten! The program has been carried out, and the reception is
over. A last general _pan! pan! pan!_ the little pipes are stowed away
into their chased sheaths, tied up in the sashes, and the mousmes rise
to depart.

They light, at the end of short sticks, a quantity of red, gray or
blue lanterns, and after a series of endless bows and curtseys, the
guests disperse themselves in the darkness of the lanes and trees.

We also go down to the town,--Yves, Chrysantheme, Oyouki, and
myself,--in order to conduct my mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, and
youthful aunt, Madame Nenufar, to their house.

We want to take one last stroll together in our old familiar pleasure
haunts, drink one more iced sherbet at the house of the _Indescribable
Butterflies_, buy one more lantern at Madame Tres-Propre's, and eat
some parting waffles at Madame L'Heure's!

I try to be affected, moved, by this leave-taking, but without
success. In this Japan, as with the little men and women who inhabit
it, there is something decidedly wanting; pleasant enough as a mere
pastime, it begets no feeling of attachment.

On our return, when I am once more with Yves and the two mousmes
c