monumental stones on which gleam remains of inscriptions in golden
letters. Rocks, brushwood, uncultivated spaces, surround us on all
sides.

There are no more passers-by, and the light is failing. We will halt
for a moment, and then it will be time to turn our steps downwards.

But, close to the spot where we stand, a box in white wood provided
with handles, a sort of sedan-chair, rests on the freshly disturbed
earth, with its lotus of silvered paper, and the little incense-sticks
burning yet, by its side; clearly someone has been buried here this
very evening.

I cannot picture this personage to myself; the Japanese are so
grotesque in life, that it is almost impossible to imagine them in the
calm majesty of death. Nevertheless, let us move further on, we might
disturb him; he is too recently dead, his presence unnerves us. We
will go and seat ourselves on one of these other tombs, so unutterably
ancient that there can no longer be anything within it but dust. And
there, seated yet in the dying sunlight, while the valleys and plains
of the earth below are already lost in shadow, we will talk together.

I wish to speak to Yves about Chrysanthème; it is indeed somewhat in
view of this that I have persuaded him to sit down; but how to set
about it without hurting his feelings, and without making myself
ridiculous, I hardly know. However, the pure air playing round me up
here, and the magnificent landscape spread beneath my feet, impart a
certain serenity to my thoughts which makes me feel a contemptuous
pity, both for my suspicions and the cause of them.