cannot get over the _mousko_ I am carrying.




XXXVII


At first it was only to Chrysanthème's guitar that I listened with
pleasure: now I am beginning to like her singing also.

She has nothing of the theatrical, or the deep assumed voice of the
virtuoso; on the contrary, her notes, always very high, are soft,
thin, and plaintive.

She will often teach Oyouki some romance, slow and dreamy, which she
has composed, or which comes back to her mind. Then they both astonish
me, for on their well-tuned guitars they will search out
accompaniments in parts, and try again each time that the chords are
not perfectly true to their ear, without ever losing themselves in the
confusion of these dissonant harmonies, always weird and always
melancholy.

Generally, while their music is going on, I am writing in the
verandah, with the superb stretched out in front of me. I write,
seated on a mat on the floor and leaning upon a little Japanese desk,
ornamented with swallows in relief; my ink is Chinese, my ink-stand,
just like that of my landlord, is in jade, with dear little frogs and
toads carved on the rim. In short, I am writing my memoirs,--exactly
as M. Sucre does downstairs! Occasionally I fancy I resemble him--a