ery evening, under
the starlit sky or the heavy thunder-clouds, dragging by the hands our
drowsy mousmes in order to regain our homes perched on high halfway up
the hill, where our bed of matting awaits us.

CHAPTER XIII

OUR "VERY TALL FRIEND"

The cleverest among us has been Louis de S-------. Having formerly
inhabited Japan, and made a marriage Japanese fashion there, he is now
satisfied to remain the friend of our wives, of whom he has become the
'Komodachi taksan takai' ("the very tall friend," as they say, on account
of his excessive height and slenderness). Speaking Japanese more readily
than we, he is their confidential adviser, disturbs or reconciles our
households at will, and has infinite amusement at our expense.

This "very tall friend" of our wives enjoys all the fun that these little
creatures can give him, without any of the worries of domestic life. With
brother Yves, and little Oyouki (the daughter of Madame Prune, my
landlady), he makes up our incongruous party.

CHAPTER XIV

OUR PIOUS HOSTS

M. Sucre and Madame Prune, my landlord and his wife, two perfectly unique
personages recently escaped from the panel of some screen, live below us
on the ground floor; and very old they seem to have this daughter of
fifteen, Oyouki, who is Chrysantheme's inseparable friend.

Both of them are entirely absorbed in the practices of Shinto religion:
perpetually on their knees before their family altar, perpetually
occupied in murmuring their lengthy orisons to the spirits, and clapping
their hands from time to time to recall around them the inattentive
essences floating in the atmosphere. In their spare moments they
cultivate, in little pots of gayly painted earthenware, dwarf shrubs and
unheard-of flowers which are delightfully fragrant in the evening.

M. Sucre is taciturn, dislikes society, and looks like a mummy in his
blue cotton dress. He writes a great deal (his memoirs, I fancy), with a
paint-brush held in his fingertips, on long strips of rice-paper of a
faint gray tint.

Madame Prune is eagerly attentive, obsequious, and rapacious; her
eyebrows are closely shaven, her teeth carefully lacquered with black, as
befits a lady of gentility, and at all and no matter what hours, she
appears on all fours at the entrance of our apartment, to offer us her
services.

As to Oyouki, she rushes upon us ten times a day--whether we are sleeping
or dressing--like a whirlwind on a visit, flashing up