s unpacked, spread out with
astounding rapidity and a certain talent for arrangement; each
seller squatting monkey-like, hands touching feet, behind his fancy
ware--always smiling, bending low with the most engaging bows. Under the
mass of these many-colored things, the deck presented the appearance of
an immense bazaar; the sailors, very much amused and full of fun, walked
among the heaped-up piles, taking the little women by the chin, buying
anything and everything; throwing broadcast their white dollars. But
how ugly, mean, and grotesque all those folk were! I began to feel
singularly uneasy and disenchanted regarding my possible marriage.

Yves and I were on duty till the next morning, and after the first
bustle, which always takes place on board when settling down in
harbor--boats to lower, booms to swing out, running rigging to make
taut--we had nothing more to do but look on. We said to each other:
"Where are we in reality?--In the United States?--In some English colony
in Australia, or in New Zealand?"

Consular residences, custom-house offices, manufactories; a dry dock
in which a Russian frigate was lying; on the heights the large European
concession, sprinkled with villas, and on the quays, American bars for
the sailors. Farther off, it is true, far away behind these commonplace
objects, in the very depths of the vast green valley, peered thousands
upon thousands of tiny black houses, a tangled mass of curious
appearance, from which here and there emerged some higher, dark red,
painted roofs, probably the true old Japanese Nagasaki, which still
exists. And in those quarters--who knows?--there may be, lurking behind
a paper screen, some affected, cat's-eyed little woman, whom perhaps in
two or three days (having no time to lose) I shall marry! But no, the
picture painted by my fancy has faded. I can no longer see this little
creature in my mind's eye; the sellers of the white mice have blurred
her image; I fear now, lest she should be like them.

At nightfall the decks were suddenly cleared as by enchantment; in a
second they had shut up their boxes, folded their sliding screens and
their trick fans, and, humbly bowing to each of us, the little men and
little women disappeared.

Slowly, as the shades of night closed around us, mingling all things
in the bluish darkness, Japan became once more, little by little, a
fairy-like and enchanted country. The great mountains, now black,
were mirrored and doubled in