flat on the floor
enjoying her daily siesta.

What a singular originality these bouquets of Chrysantheme always
have: a something difficult to define, a Japanese slimness, a
mannered grace which we should never succeed in imparting to them.

She was sleeping flat on her face upon the mats, her high headdress
and tortoiseshell pins standing out boldly from the rest of the
horizontal figure. The train of her tunic prolonged her delicate
little body, like the tail of a bird; her arms were stretched
crosswise, the sleeves spread out like wings,--and her long guitar lay
beside her.

She looked like a dead fairy; or still more did she resemble some
great blue dragon-fly, which, having alighted on that spot, some
unkind hand had pinned to the floor.

Madame Prune, who had come upstairs after me, always officious and
eager, manifested by her gestures her sentiments of indignation on
beholding the careless reception accorded by Chrysantheme to her lord
and master, and advanced to wake her.

"Pray do nothing of the kind, my good Madame Prune, you don't know how
much I prefer her like that!" I had left my shoes below, according to
custom, by the side of the little clogs and sandals; and I entered on
the tips of my toes, very, very softly, to go and sit awhile under the
verandah.

What a pity this little Chrysantheme cannot always be asleep; she is
really extremely decorative seen in this manner,--and like this, at
least, she does not bore me. Who knows what may perchance be going on
in that little head and heart! If I only had the means of finding out!
But strange to say, since we have kept house together, instead of
pushing my studies in the Japanese language further, I have neglected
them, so much have I felt the utter impossibility of ever interesting
myself in the subject.

Seated under my verandah, my eyes wandered over the temples and
cemeteries spread at my feet, over the woods and green mountains, over
Nagasaki lying bathed in the sunlight. The cicalas were chirping their
loudest, the strident noise trembling feverishly in the hot air. All
was calm, full of light and full of heat.

Nevertheless, to my taste, it is not yet enough so! What then can have
changed upon the earth? The burning noon-days of summer, such as I can
recall in days gone by, were more brilliant, more full of sunshine;
Nature seemed to me in those days more powerful, more terrible. One
would say this was only a pale copy of all that I knew in