Every morning as the sound of Madame Prune's chanted prayer rises
through the reverberating air, I awake and go down towards the sea, by
the grassy pathways full of dew.

The chief occupation of this Japanese country, seems to be a perpetual
hunt after curios. We sit down on the mattings, in the
antique-sellers' little booths, take a cup of tea with the salesmen,
and rummage with our own hands in the cupboards and chests, where many
a fantastic piece of old rubbish is huddled away. The bargaining,
much discussed, is laughingly carried on for several days, as though
we were trying to play off some excellent little practical joke upon
each other.

I really make a sad abuse of the adjective _little_, I am quite aware
of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the
temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little,
finical, affected,--all Japan is contained, both physically and
morally, in these three words.

My purchases are accumulating up there, in my little wood and paper
house; but how much more Japanese it really was, in its bare
emptiness, such as M. Sucre and Madame Prune had conceived it. There
are now many lamps of a religious shape hanging from the ceiling; many
stools and many vases, as many gods and goddesses as in a pagoda.

There is even a little Shintoist altar, before which Madame Prune has
not been able to restrain her feelings, and before which she has
fallen down and chanted her prayers in her bleating old nanny-goat
voice: