ing on our fresh and scented garden.

The gallery is closed already, and a little mousko, seated at the door,
explains, with many low bows, that we come too late, all the amateurs
are gone; we must come again tomorrow.

The evening is so mild and fine that we remain out of doors, following,
without any definite purpose, the pathway which rises ever higher
and higher, and loses itself at length in the solitary regions of the
mountain among the upper peaks.

For an hour at least we wander on--an unintended walk--and finally find
ourselves at a great height commanding an endless perspective lighted by
the last gleams of daylight; we are in a desolate and mournful spot, in
the midst of the little Buddhist cemeteries, which are scattered over
the country in every direction.

We meet a few belated laborers, who are returning from the fields with
bundles of tea upon their shoulders. These peasants have a half-savage
air. They are half naked, too, or clothed only in long robes of blue
cotton; as they pass, they salute us with humble bows.

No trees in this elevated region. Fields of tea alternate with tombs:
old granite statues which represent Buddha in his lotus, or else old
monumental stones on which gleam remains of inscriptions in golden
letters. Rocks, brushwood, uncultivated spaces, surround us on all
sides.

We meet no more passers-by, and the light is failing. We will halt for a
moment, and then it will be time to turn our steps homeward.

But, close to the spot where we stand, a box of white wood provided with
handles, a sort of sedan-chair, rests on the freshly disturbed earth,
with its lotus of silvered paper, and the little incense-sticks, burning
yet, by its side; clearly some one has been buried here this very
evening.

I can not picture this personage to myself; the Japanese are so
grotesque in life that it is almost impossible to imagine them in the
calm majesty of death. Nevertheless, let us move farther on, we might
disturb him; he is too recently dead, his presence unnerves us. We
will go and seat ourselves on one of these other tombs, so unutterably
ancient that there can no longer be anything within it but dust. And
there, seated in the dying sunlight, while the valleys and plains of the
earth below are already lost in shadow, we will talk together.

I wish to speak to Yves about Chrysantheme; it is indeed somewhat in
view of this that I have persuaded him to sit down; but how to set about
it wit