supposed they have neither back nor shoulders; their delicate figures
are lost in these wide robes, which float around what might be little
marionnettes without bodies at all, and which would slip to the ground
of themselves were they not kept together midway, about where a waist
should be, by the wide silken sashes,--a very different comprehension
of the art of dressing to ours, which endeavors as much as possible to
bring into relief the curves, real or false, of the figure.

And then, how much I admire the flowers arranged by Chrysanthème in
our vases, with her Japanese taste: lotus flowers, great sacred
flowers of a tender, veined rose-color, the milky rose-color seen on
porcelain; they resemble, when in full bloom, great water-lilies, and
when only in bud, might be taken for long pale tulips. Their soft but
rather cloying scent is added to that other indefinable odor of
mousmés, of yellow race, of Japan, which is always and everywhere in
the air. The late flowers of September, at this season very rare and
expensive, grow on longer stems than the summer blooms; Chrysanthème
has left them their immense aquatic leaves of a melancholy
seaweed-green, and mingled with them tall slight rushes. I look at
them, and recall with some irony those great round bunches in the
shape of cauliflowers, which our florists sell in France, wrapt in
their white lace-paper.

Still no letters from Europe, from any one. How things change, become
effaced and forgotten. Here I am accommodating myself to this finical
Japan and dwindling down to its affected mannerism; I feel that my
thoughts run in smaller grooves, my tastes incline to smaller
things,--things which suggest nothing greater than a smile. I am
becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, to doll-like desks, to
miniature bowls with which to play at dinner, to the immaculate