anterns,--big, red balloons,
decorated with star-fish, seaweed, and green sharks.

It is nearly eleven o'clock when we make our start. In the central
quarters the virtuous Niponese are already closing their little
booths, putting out their lamps, shutting the wooden framework,
drawing their paper panels.

Further on, in the old-fashioned suburban streets, all is shut up long
ago, and our carts roll on through the black night. We cry out to our
djins: "Ayakou! ayakou!" ("Quick! quick!") and they run as hard as
they can, uttering little shrieks, like some merry animal full of wild
gayety. We rush like a whirlwind through the darkness, all five in
Indian file, dashing and jolting over the old uneven flagstones, dimly
lighted up by our red balloons fluttering at the end of their bamboo
stems. From time to time some Niponese, night-capped in his blue
kerchief, opens a window to see who these noisy madcaps can be,
dashing by so rapidly and so late. Or else some faint glimmer, thrown
by us on our passage, discovers the hideous smile of a large stone
animal seated at the gate of a pagoda.

At last we arrive at the foot of Osueva's temple, and, leaving our
djins with our little gigs, we clamber up the gigantic steps,
completely deserted at this hour of the night.

Chrysantheme, who always likes to play the part of a tired little
girl, of a spoilt and pouting child, ascends slowly between Yves and
myself, clinging to our arms.

Jonquille, on the contrary, skips up like a bird, amusing herself by
counting the endless steps:

"Hitots'! F'tats'! Mits'! Yots'!" ("One! two! three! four!") she
exclaims, springing up by a series of little light bounds.

"Itsoots! Mouts'! Nanats! Yats! Kokonots!" ("Five! six! seven! eight!
nine!")

She lays a great stress on the accentuations, as though to make the
numbers sound even more droll.

A little silver aigrette glitters in her beautiful black chignon; her
delicate and graceful figure seems strangely fantastic, and the
darkness that envelops us conceals the fact that her face is almost
ugly, and almost without eyes.

This evening Chrysantheme and Jonquille really look like little
fairies; at certain moments the most insignificant Japanese have this
appearance, by dint of whimsical elegance and ingenious arrangement.

The granite stairs, immense, deserted, uniformly gray under the
nocturnal sky, seem to vanish into the empty space above us, and when
we turn round, to disappear in t