us with some
details preliminary to his launch into a singular kind of domestic
existence, which are interesting as bearing on the morals of the opera
and as indicative of the fact that he is a closer observer of Oriental
life than his American confrere. He lets us see how merchantable
"wives" are chosen, permits M. Kangourou to exhibit his wares and
expatiate on their merits. There is the daughter of a wealthy China
merchant, a young woman of great accomplishments who can write
"commercially" and has won a prize in a poetic contest with a sonnet.
She is, consequently, very dear--100 yen, say $100--but that is of no
consequence; what matters is that she has a disfiguring scar on her
cheek. She will not do. Then there is Mlle. Jasmin, a pretty girl of
fifteen years, who can be had for $18 or $20 a month (contract
cancellable at the end of any month for non-payment), a few dresses of
fashionable cut and a pleasant house to live in. Mlle. Jasmin comes to
be inspected with one old lady, two old ladies, three old ladies (mamma
and aunts), and a dozen friends and neighbors, big and little. Loti's
moral stomach revolts at the thought of buying for his uses a child who
looks like a doll, and is shocked at the public parade which has been
made of her as a commodity. He has not yet been initiated into some of
the extraordinary customs of Japan, nor yet into some of the
distinctions attendant upon those customs. He learns of one of the
latter when he suggests to the broker that he might marry a charming
geisha who had taken his fancy at a tea house. The manner in which the
suggestion was received convinced him that he might as well have
purposed to marry the devil himself as a professional dancer and
singer. Among the train of Mlle. Jasmin's friends is one less young
than Mlle. Jasmin, say about eighteen, and already more of a woman; and
when Loti says, "Why not her?" M. Kangourou trots her out for
inspection and, discreetly sending Loti away, concludes the arrangement
between night-fall and 10 o'clock, when he comes with the announcement:
"All is arranged, sir; her parents will give her up for $20 a
month--the same price as Mlle. Jasmin."

So Mlle. Chrysantheme became the wife of Pierre Loti during his stay at
Nagasaki, and then dutifully went home to her mother without breaking
her heart at all. But she was not a geisha, only a mousme--"one of the
prettiest words in the Nipponese language," comments M. Loti, "it seems
almost as