f ghosts, of spirits, of eternity, of the
great hereafter, of chaos--and we entirely forget little Chrysantheme!

When we arrive at Diou-djen-dji in the starry night, the music of her
'chamecen', heard from afar, recalls to us her existence; she is studying
some vocal duet with Mademoiselle Oyouki, her pupil.

I feel myself in very good humor this evening, and, relieved from my
absurd suspicions about my poor Yves, am quite disposed to enjoy without
reserve my last days in Japan, and to derive therefrom all the amusement
possible.

Let us then repose ourselves on the dazzling white mats, and listen to
the singular duet sung by those two mousmes: a strange musical medley,
slow and mournful, beginning with two or three high notes, and descending
at each couplet, in an almost imperceptible manner, into actual
solemnity. The song keeps its dragging slowness; but the accompaniment,
becoming more and more accentuated, is like the impetuous sound of a
far-off hurricane. At the end, when these girlish voices, usually so
soft, give out their hoarse and guttural notes, Chrysantheme's hands fly
wildly and convulsively over the quivering strings. Both of them lower
their heads, pout their underlips in the effort to bring out these
astonishingly deep notes. And at these moments their little narrow eyes
open, and seem to reveal an unexpected something, almost a soul, under
these trappings of marionettes.

But it is a soul which more than ever appears to me of a different
species from my own; I feel my thoughts to be as far removed from theirs
as from the flitting conceptions of a bird, or the dreams of a monkey; I
feel there is between them and myself a great gulf, mysterious and awful.

Other sounds of music, wafted to us from the distance, interrupt for a
moment those of our mousmes. From the depths below, in Nagasaki, arises a
sudden noise of gongs and guitars; we rush to the balcony of the veranda
to hear it better.

It is a 'matsouri', a fete, a procession passing through the quarter
which is not so virtuous as our own, so our mousmes tell us, with a
disdainful toss of the head. Nevertheless, from the heights on which we
dwell, seen thus in a bird's-eye view, by the uncertain light of the
stars, this district has a singularly chaste air, and the concert going
on therein, purified in its ascent from the depths of the abyss to our
lofty altitudes, reaches us confusedly, a smothered, enchanted,
enchanting sound.

Then it di