art up again,
change their costumes, change their faces, tearing about in one
continual frenzy. Suddenly three, even four appear at the same time;
they are nothing more than the four limbs of the outstretched man,
whose legs and arms, raised on high, are each one dressed up, and
capped with a wig under which peers a mask; between these phantoms
tremendous fighting and battling take place, and many a sword-thrust
is exchanged. The most fearful of all is a certain puppet representing
an hag; every time she appears, with her weird head and ghastly grin,
the lights burn low, the music of the accompanying orchestra moans
forth a sinister strain given by the flutes, mingled with a rattling
tremolo which sounds like the clatter of bones. This creature
evidently plays an ugly part in the piece,--that of a horrible old
ghoul, spiteful and famished. Still more appalling than her person is
her shadow, which, projected upon a white screen, is abnormally and
vividly distinct; by means of some unknown process this shadow, which
nevertheless follows all her movements, assumes the aspect of a wolf.
At a given moment the hag turns round and presents the profile of her
distorted snub nose as she accepts the bowl of rice which is offered
to her; on the screen at the very same instant appears the elongated
outline of the wolf, with its pointed ears, its muzzle and chops, its
great teeth and hanging tongue. The orchestra grinds, wails, quivers;
then suddenly bursts out into funereal shrieks, like a concert of
owls; the hag is now eating, and her wolfish shadow is eating also,
greedily moving its jaws and nibbling at another shadow easy to
recognize,--the arm of a little child.

We now go on to see the _great salamander_ of Japan, an animal rare
in this country, and quite unknown elsewhere, a great cold mass;
sluggish and benumbed, looking like some antediluvian _experiment_,
forgotten in the inner seas of this archipelago.

Next comes the trained elephant, the terror of our mousmes, the
equilibrists, the menagerie.

It is one o'clock in the morning before we are back at Diou-djen-dji.

We first get Yves to bed in the little paper room he has already once
occupied. Then we go to bed ourselves, after the inevitable
preparations, the smoking of the little pipe, and the _pan! pan! pan!
pan!_ on the edge of the box.

Suddenly Yves begins to move restlessly in his sleep, to toss about,
giving great kicks on the wall, and making a frightful