*

I must admit that this episode of my childhood and the spiders, have
little to do with the story of Chrysantheme. But an incongruous
interruption is quite in keeping with the taste of this country;
everywhere it is practiced, in conversation, in music, even in
painting; a landscape painter, for instance, when he has finished a
picture of mountains and crags, will not hesitate to draw in the very
middle of the sky a circle, or a lozenge, or some kind of framework,
within which he will represent anything incoherent and inappropriate:
a bonze fanning himself, or a lady taking a cup of tea. Nothing is
more thoroughly Japanese than such digressions made without the
slightest apropos.

Moreover, if I roused my past memories, it was the better to force
myself to notice the difference between that 14th of July last year,
so peacefully spent amidst surroundings familiar to me from my
earliest infancy, and the present animated one, passed in the midst of
such a novel world.

To-day, therefore, under the scorching mid-day sun, at two o'clock,
three quick-footed djins dragged us at full speed,--Yves, Chrysantheme
and myself,--in Indian file, each in a little jolting cart, to the
further end of Nagasaki, and there deposited us at the foot of some
gigantic steps that run straight up into the mountain.

These are the granite steps leading to the great temple of Osueva;
wide enough to give access to a whole regiment; they are as grand and
imposing as any work of Babylon or Nineveh, and in complete contrast
with all the finical surroundings.

We climb up and up,--Chrysantheme listlessly, affecting fatigue, under
her paper parasol painted with pink butterflies on a black ground. As
we ascended, we passed under enormous monastic porticos, also in
granite of rude and primitive style. In truth, these steps and these
temple porticos are the only imposing works that this people has
created, and they astonish, for they scarcely seem Japanese.

We climb up still higher. At this sultry hour of the day, from top to
bottom of the immense gray steps, only we three are to be seen; on all
that granite there are but the pink butterflies on Chrysantheme's
parasol, to throw a cheerful and brilliant note.

We passed through the first temple yard, in which are a couple of
white china turrets, bronze lanterns, and the statue of a large horse
in jade. Then without pausing at the sanctuary, we turned to the left,
and entered a shady garden, whi