r Gargantua, and
filled to the very brim with rice, plainly cooked in water.
Chrysantheme fills another large bowl from it (sometimes twice,
sometimes three times), darkens its snowy whiteness with a black sauce
flavored with fish which is contained in a delicately shaped blue
cruet, mixes it all together, carries the bowl to her lips, and crams
down all the rice, shoveling it with her two chopsticks into her very
throat. Next the little cups and covers are picked up, as well as the
tiniest crumb that may have fallen upon the white mats, the
irreproachable purity of which nothing is allowed to tarnish. And so
ends the dinner.

XXIII.

_August 2nd_.

Down below in the town, a street singer had established herself in a
little thoroughfare; people had collected around her to listen to her
singing, and we three--that is, Yves, Chrysantheme and I--who chanced
to be passing, stopped like others.

Quite young, rather fat, fairly pretty, she strummed her guitar and
sang, rolling her eyes fiercely, like a virtuoso executing feats of
difficulty. She lowered her head, stuck her chin into her neck, in
order to draw deeper notes from the furthermost recesses of her body;
and succeeded in bringing forth a great hoarse voice,--a voice that
might have belonged to an aged frog, a ventriloquist's voice, coming
from whence it would be impossible to say (this is the best stage
manner, the final word of art, for the interpretation of tragic
pieces).

Yves cast an indignant glance upon her:

"Good gracious," said he, "it's the voice of a--" (words failed him,
in his astonishment) "it's the voice of a--a monster!"

And he looked at me, almost frightened by this little being, and
anxious to know what I thought of it.

My poor Yves was out of temper on this occasion, because I had induced
him to come out in a straw hat with a turned-up brim, which did not
please him.

"It suits you remarkably well, Yves, I assure you."

"Oh, indeed! You say so, you. For my part, I think it looks like a
magpie's nest!"

As a fortunate diversion from the singer and the hat, here comes a
cortege, advancing towards us from the end of the street, something
remarkably like a funeral. Bonzes march in front dressed in robes of
black gauze, having much the appearance of Catholic priests; the
principal personage of the procession, the corpse, comes last, laid in
a sort of little closed palanquin which is daintily pretty. This is
followed by a ban