fers Sikou a
cardboard mask representing the bloated countenance of Dai-Cok, god of
wealth; and Sikou replies with a present of a long crystal trumpet, by
means of which are produced the most extraordinary sounds, like a turkey
gobbling. Everything is uncouth, fantastical to excess, grotesquely
lugubrious; everywhere we are surprised by incomprehensible conceptions,
which seem the work of distorted imaginations.

In the fashionable tea-houses, where we finish our evenings, the little
serving-maids now bow to us, on our arrival, with an air of respectful
recognition, as belonging to the fast set of Nagasaki. There we carry on
desultory conversations, full of misunderstandings and endless 'quid pro
quo' of uncouth words, in little gardens lighted up with lanterns, near
ponds full of goldfish, with little bridges, little islets, and little
ruined towers. They hand us tea and white and pink-colored sweetmeats
flavored with pepper that taste strange and unfamiliar, and beverages
mixed with snow tasting of flowers or perfumes.

To give a faithful account of those evenings would require a more
affected style than our own; and some kind of graphic sign would have
also to be expressly invented and scattered at haphazard among the
words, indicating the moment when the reader should laugh--rather a
forced laugh, perhaps, but amiable and gracious. The evening at an end,
it is time to return up there.

Oh! that street, that road, that we must clamber up every evening, under
the starlit sky or the heavy thunder-clouds, dragging by the hands our
drowsy mousmes in order to regain our homes perched on high halfway up
the hill, where our bed of matting awaits us.

CHAPTER XIII. OUR "VERY TALL FRIEND"

The cleverest among us has been Louis de S-------. Having formerly
inhabited Japan, and made a marriage Japanese fashion there, he is now
satisfied to remain the friend of our wives, of whom he has become
the 'Komodachi taksan takai' ("the very tall friend," as they say, on
account of his excessive height and slenderness). Speaking Japanese
more readily than we, he is their confidential adviser, disturbs or
reconciles our households at will, and has infinite amusement at our
expense.

This "very tall friend" of our wives enjoys all the fun that these
little creatures can give him, without any of the worries of domestic
life. With brother Yves, and little Oyouki (the daughter of Madame
Prune, my landlady), he makes up our incong