f idiots,
with their lanky locks and pot-hats. What a shock when she turns round!
She wears over her face the horribly grinning, death-like mask of a
spectre or a vampire. The mask unfastened, falls. And behold! a darling
little fairy of about twelve or fifteen years of age, slim, and already a
coquette, already a woman--dressed in a long robe of shaded dark-blue
china crape, covered with embroidery representing bats-gray bats, black
bats, golden bats.

Suddenly there are steps on the stairs, the light foot steps of
barefooted women pattering over the white mats. No doubt the first course
of my luncheon is just about to be served. I fall back quickly, fixed and
motionless, upon my black velvet cushion. There are three of them now,
three waiting-maids who arrive in single file, with smiles and curtseys.
One offers me the spirit-lamp and the teapot; another, preserved fruits
in delightful little plates; the third, absolutely indefinable objects
upon gems of little trays. And they grovel before me on the floor,
placing all this plaything of a meal at my feet.

At this moment, my impressions of Japan are charming enough; I feel
myself fairly launched upon this tiny, artificial, fictitious world,
which I felt I knew already from the paintings on lacquer and porcelains.
It is so exact a representation! The three little squatting women,
graceful and dainty, with their narrow slits of eyes, their magnificent
coiffures in huge bows, smooth and shining as shoe-polish, and the little
tea-service on the floor, the landscape seen through the veranda, the
pagoda perched among the clouds; and over all the same affectation
everywhere, in every detail. Even the woman's melancholy voice, still to
be heard behind the paper partition, was evidently the proper way for
them to sing--these musicians I had so often seen painted in amazing
colors on rice-paper, half closing their dreamy eyes among impossibly
large flowers. Long before I arrived there, I had perfectly pictured
Japan to myself. Nevertheless, in the reality it almost seems to be
smaller, more finicking than I had imagined it, and also much more
mournful, no doubt by reason of that great pall of black clouds hanging
over us, and this incessant rain.

While awaiting M. Kangourou (who is dressing himself, it appears, and
will be here shortly), it may be as well to begin luncheon.

In the daintiest bowl imaginable, adorned with flights of storks, is the
most wildly impossible soup