Japan had himself tattooed. On his narrow chest he had a terrible
legendary god of Nippon, and on his arms a cock and a skeleton,
the latter with a fan and a lantern. On his belly was limned a
nude woman. He had certain other decorations the fame of which had
been bruited wide so that a keen curiosity existed to see them, and
they were discussed in whispers by white femininity and with many
"Aucs!" of astonishment by the brown. They were Pompeiian friezes in
their unconventionality of subject and treatment.

Llewellyn, McHenry, David, and I accompanied the count to his residence
on the outskirts of Papeete to taste a vintage of Burgundy he had sent
him from Beaune. Like most modern houses in Tahiti, his was solely
utilitarian, and was built by a former American consul. It exactly
ministered to the comforts of a demanding European exquisite. The
house was framed in wide verandas, and was in a magnificent grove
of cocoanut-trees affording beauty and shade, with extensive fields
of sugar-cane on the other side of the road, and a glimpse of the
beach and lagoon a little distance away. A singing brook ran past
the door. The bedrooms were large and open to every breeze, and the
tables for dining and amusement mostly set upon the verandas.

Polonsky's toilet-table was covered with gold boxes and bottles and
brushes; scents and powders and pastes. If he moved out, Gaby de Lys
might have moved in and lacked nothing. He was a boulevardier, his
clothes from Paris, conforming not at all to the sartorial customs
of Tahiti, and his varnished boots and alpine hat, with his saffron
automobile, marked him as a person. In that he resembled Higby,
an Englishman in Papeete, who wore the evening dress of London
whenever a steamship came in, though it might be noon, and on the
king's birthday and other British feasts put it on when he awoke. He