made of seaweed. After which there are little
fish dried in sugar, crabs in sugar, beans in sugar, and fruits in
vinegar and pepper. All this is atrocious, but above all unexpected and
unimaginable. The little women make me eat, laughing much, with that
perpetual, irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan--they make me eat,
according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with
affected grace. I am becoming accustomed to their faces. The whole effect
is refined--a refinement so entirely different from our own that at first
sight I understand nothing of it, although in the long run it may end by
pleasing me.

Suddenly enters, like a night butterfly awakened in broad daylight, like
a rare and surprising moth, the dancing-girl from the other compartment,
the child who wore the horrible mask. No doubt she wishes to have a look
at me. She rolls her eyes like a timid kitten, and then all at once
tamed, nestles against me, with a coaxing air of childishness, which is a
delightfully transparent assumption. She is slim, elegant, delicate, and
smells sweet; she is drolly painted, white as plaster, with a little
circle of rouge marked very precisely in the middle of each cheek, the
mouth reddened, and a touch of gilding outlining the under lip. As they
could not whiten the back of her neck on account of all the delicate
little curls of hair growing there, they had, in their love of
exactitude, stopped the white plaster in a straight line, which might
have been cut with a knife, and in consequence at the nape appears a
square of natural skin of a deep yellow.

An imperious note sounds on the guitar, evidently a summons! Crac! Away
she goes, the little fairy, to entertain the drivelling fools on the
other side of the screens.

Suppose I marry this one, without seeking any further. I should respect
her as a child committed to my care; I should take her for what she is: a
fantastic and charming plaything. What an amusing little household I
should set up! Really, short of marrying a china ornament, I should find
it difficult to choose better.

At this moment enters M. Kangourou, clad in a suit of gray tweed, which
might have come from La Belle Jardiniere or the Pont Neuf, with a pot-hat
and white thread gloves. His countenance is at once foolish and cunning;
he has hardly any nose or eyes. He makes a real Japanese salutation: an
abrupt dip, the hands placed flat on the knees, the body making a right
angle to the legs