o is that young lady over there, in dark blue?"

"Over there, Monsieur? She is called Mademoiselle Chrysantheme. She came
with the others you see here; she is only here as a spectator. She
pleases you?" said he, with eager suddenness, espying a way out of his
difficulty. Then, forgetting all his politeness, all his ceremoniousness,
all his Japanesery, he takes her by the hand, forces her to rise, to
stand in the dying daylight, to let herself be seen. And she, who has
followed our eyes and begins to guess what is on foot, lowers her head in
confusion, with a more decided but more charming pout, and tries to step
back, half-sulky, half-smiling.

"It makes no difference," continues M. Kangourou, "it can be arranged
just as well with this one; she is not married either, Monsieur!"

She is not married! Then why didn't the idiot propose her to me at once
instead of the other, for whom I have a feeling of the greatest pity,
poor little soul, with her pearl-gray dress, her sprig of flowers, her
now sad and mortified expression, and her eyes which twinkle like those
of a child about to cry.

"It can be arranged, Monsieur!" repeats Kangourou again, who at this
moment appears to me a go-between of the lowest type, a rascal of the
meanest kind.

Only, he adds, we, Yves and I, are in the way during the negotiations.
And, while Mademoiselle Chrysantheme remains with her eyelids lowered, as
befits the occasion, while the various families, on whose countenances
may be read every degree of astonishment, every phase of expectation,
remain seated in a circle on my white mats, he sends us two into the
veranda, and we gaze down into the depths below us, upon a misty and
vague Nagasaki, a Nagasaki melting into a blue haze of darkness.

Then ensue long discourses in Japanese, arguments without end. M.
Kangourou, who is laundryman and low scamp in French only, has returned
for these discussions to the long formulas of his country. From time to
time I express impatience, I ask this worthy creature, whom I am less and
less able to consider in a serious light:

"Come now, tell us frankly, Kangourou, are we any nearer coming to some
arrangement? Is all this ever going to end?"

"In a moment, Monsieur, in a moment;" and he resumes his air of political
economist seriously debating social problems.

Well, one must submit to the slowness of this people. And, while the
darkness falls like a veil over the Japanese town, I have leisure to
refl