n extra burden in the shape
of a mousko on my back. What an irony of fate!

As I had expected, all our shutters and doors are closed, bolted, and
barred; no one expects us, and we have to make a prodigious noise at the
door. Chrysantheme sets to work and calls with all her might:

"Hou Oume-San-an-an-an!" (In English: "Hi! Madame Pru-u-uu-une!")

These intonations in her little voice are unknown to me; her long-drawn
call in the echoing darkness of midnight has so strange an accent,
something so unexpected and wild, that it impresses me with a dismal
feeling of far-off exile.

At last Madame Prune appears to open the door to us, only half awake
and much astonished; by way of a nightcap she wears a monstrous cotton
turban, on the blue ground of which a few white storks are playfully
disporting themselves. Holding in the tips of her fingers, with an
affectation of graceful fright, the long stalk of her beflowered
lantern, she gazes intently into our faces, one after another, to
reassure herself of our identity; but the poor old lady can not get over
her surprise at the sight of the mousko I am carrying.

CHAPTER XXXVII. COMPLICATIONS

At first it was only to Chrysantheme's guitar that I listened with
pleasure now I am beginning to like her singing also.

She has nothing of the theatrical, or the deep, assumed voice of the
virtuoso; on the contrary, her notes, always very high, are soft, thin,
and plaintive.

She often teaches Oyouki some romance, slow and dreamy, which she has
composed, or which comes back to her mind. Then they both astonish me,
for on their well-tuned guitars they will pick out accompaniments in
parts, and try again each time that the chords are not perfectly true
to their ear, without ever losing themselves in the confusion of these
dissonant harmonies, always weird and always melancholy.

Usually, while their music is going on, I am writing on the veranda,
with the superb panorama before me. I write, seated on a mat on the
floor and leaning upon a little Japanese desk, ornamented with swallows
in relief; my ink is Chinese, my inkstand, just like that of my
landlord, is in jade, with dear little frogs and toads carved on the
rim. In short, I am writing my memoirs,--exactly as M. Sucre does
downstairs! Occasionally I fancy I resemble him--a very disagreeable
fancy.

My memoirs are composed of incongruous details, minute observations of
colors, shapes, scents, and sounds.

It is true