o of a monster, who stares down upon us, with
his big stony eyes, his cruel grimace and smile.

This portico and the monster are the two great overwhelming masses in the
foreground of the incredible scene before us; they stand out with
dazzling boldness against the vague and ashy blue of the distant sphere
beyond; behind them, Nagasaki is spread out in a bird's-eye view, faintly
outlined in the transparent darkness with myriads of little colored
lights, and the extravagantly dented profile of the mountains is
delineated on the starlit sky, blue upon blue, transparency upon
transparency. A corner of the harbor also is visible, far up, undefined,
like a lake lost in clouds the water, faintly illumined by a ray of
moonlight, making it shine like a sheet of silver.

Around us the long crystal trumpets keep up their gobble. Groups of
polite and frivolous persons pass and repass like fantastic shadows:
childish bands of small-eyed mousmes with smile so candidly meaningless
and coiffures shining through their bright silver flowers; ugly men
waving at the end of long branches their eternal lanterns shaped like
birds, gods, or insects.

Behind us, in the illuminated and wide-open temple, the bonzes sit,
immovable embodiments of doctrine, in the glittering sanctuary inhabited
by divinities, chimeras, and symbols. The crowd, monotonously droning its
mingled prayers and laughter, presses around them, sowing its alms
broadcast; with a continuous jingle, the money rolls on the ground into
the precincts reserved to the priests, where the white mats entirely f
disappear under the mass of many-sized coins accumulated there as if
after a deluge of silver and bronze.

We, however, feel thoroughly at sea in the midst of this festivity; we
look on, we laugh like the rest, we make foolish and senseless remarks in
a language insufficiently learned, which this evening, I know not why, we
can hardly understand. Notwithstanding the night breeze, we find it very
hot under our awning, and we absorb quantities of odd-looking water-ices,
served in cups, which taste like scented frost, or rather like flowers
steeped in snow. Our mousmes order for themselves great bowls of candied
beans mixed with hail--real hailstones, such as we might pick up after a
hailstorm in March.

Glou! glou! glou! the crystal trumpets slowly repeat their notes, the
powerful sonority of which has a labored and smothered sound, as if they
came from under water; they mingl