en jumbled together
in the childish brain of a sleepy mousme?

Two very insignificant episodes have somewhat attached me to
her--(bonds of this kind seldom fail to draw closer in the end). The
first occasion was as follows:--

Madame Prune one day brought forth a relic of her gay youth, a
tortoiseshell comb of rare transparency, one of those combs that it is
good style to place on the summit of the head, lightly poised,
scarcely stuck at all in the air, with all the teeth showing. Taking
it out of a pretty little lacquered box, she held it up in the air and
blinked her eyes, looking through it at the sky--a bright summer
sky--as one does to examine the quality of a precious stone.

"Here is," she said, "an object of great value that you should offer
to your little wife."

My mousme, very much taken by it, admired the clearness of the comb
and its graceful shape.

The lacquered box, however, pleased me most. On the cover was a
wonderful painting in gold on gold, representing a field of rice, seen
very close, on a windy day: a tangle of ears and grass beaten down and
twisted by a terrible squall; here and there, between the distorted
stalks, the muddy earth of the rice-swamp was visible; there were even
little pools of water, produced by bits of the transparent lacquer on
which tiny particles of gold seemed to float about like chaff in a
thick liquid; two or three insects, which required a microscope to be
well seen, were clinging in a terrified manner to the rushes, and the
whole picture was no larger than a woman's hand.

As for Madame Prune's comb, I confess it left me indifferent, and I
turned a deaf ear, thinking it very insignificant and expensive. Then
Chrysantheme answered mournfully:

"No, thank you, I don't want it; take it away, dear Madame Prune."

And at the same time she heaved a deep sigh, full of meaning, which
plainly said:

"He is not so fond of me as all that.--Useless to bother him."

I immediately made the wished-for purchase.

Later on, when Chrysantheme will have become an old monkey like Madame
Prune, with her black teeth and long orisons, she, in her turn, will
retail that comb to some fine lady of a fresh generation.

On another occasion the sun had given me a headache; I lay on the
floor resting my head on my snake-skin pillow. My eyes were dim, and
everything appeared to turn round: the open verandah, the big expanse
of luminous evening sky, and a variety of kites hovering agains