as from the flitting conceptions of a bird, or the dreams of a monkey;
I feel there is betwixt them and myself a great gulf, mysterious and
awful.

Other sounds of music, wafted to us from the distance outside,
interrupt for a moment that of our mousmés. From the depths below,
down in Nagasaki, arises a sudden noise of gongs and guitars; we rush
to the balcony of the verandah to hear it better.

It is a _matsouri_, a fête, a procession passing through the quarter
which is not so virtuous as our own, so our mousmés tell us, with a
disdainful toss of the head. Nevertheless, from the heights on which
we dwell, seen thus in a bird's-eye view, by the uncertain light of
the stars, this district has a singularly chaste air, and the concert
going on therein, purified in its ascent from the depths of the abyss
to our lofty altitudes, reaches us confusedly, a smothered, enchanted,
enchanting sound.

Then it diminishes, and dies away into silence.

The two little friends return to their seats on the mats, and once
more take up their melancholy duet. An orchestra, discreetly subdued
but innumerable, of crickets and cicalas, accompanies them in an
unceasing tremolo,--the immense far-reaching tremolo, which, gentle
and eternal, never ceases on Japanese land.




LI.