at the right moment," they exclaim,
jumping with joy. "How fortunate we are! This very evening there is to be
a pilgrimage to the great temple of the jumping Tortoise! The whole town
will be there; all our married friends have already started, the whole
set, X----, Y----, Z----, Touki-San, Campanule, and Jonquille, with 'the
friend of amazing height.' And these two, poor Chrysantheme and poor
Oyouki, would have been obliged to stay at home with heavy hearts, had we
not arrived, because Madame Prune had been seized with faintness and
hysterics after her dinner."

Quickly the mousmes must deck themselves out. Chrysantheme is ready;
Oyouki hurries, changes her dress, and, putting on a mouse-colored gray
robe, begs me to arrange the bows of her fine sash-black satin lined with
yellow-sticking at the same time in her hair a silver topknot. We light
our lanterns, swinging at the end of little sticks; M. Sucre,
overwhelming us with thanks for his daughter, accompanies us on all fours
to the door, and we go off gayly through the clear and balmy night.

Below, we find the town in all the animation of a great holiday. The
streets are thronged; the crowd passes by--a laughing, capricious, slow,
unequal tide, flowing onward, however, steadily in the same direction,
toward the same goal. From it rises a penetrating but light murmur, in
which dominate the sounds of laughter, and the low-toned interchange of
polite speeches. Then follow lanterns upon lanterns. Never in my life
have I seen so many, so variegated, so complicated, and so extraordinary.

We follow, drifting with the surging crowd, borne along by it. There are
groups of women of every age, decked out in their smartest clothes,
crowds of mousmes with aigrettes of flowers in their hair, or little
silver topknots like Oyouki--pretty little physiognomies, little, narrow
eyes peeping between their slits like those of new-born kittens, fat,
pale, little cheeks, round, puffed-out, half-opened lips. They are
pretty, nevertheless, these little Nipponese, in their smiles and
childishness.

The men, on the other hand, wear many a pot-hat, pompously added to the
long national robe, and giving thereby a finishing touch to their
cheerful ugliness, resembling nothing so much as dancing monkeys. They
carry boughs in their hands, whole shrubs even, amid the foliage of which
dangle all sorts of curious lanterns in the shapes of imps and birds.

As we advance in the direction of the temp