the ends of slight sticks, prepare to beat a retreat with many
compliments, bows and curtsies. When it is a question of descending
the stairs, no one is willing to go first, and at a given moment, the
whole party are again on all fours, motionless and murmuring polite
phrases in undertones.

_"Haul back there!"_ said Yves, laughing and employing a nautical term
used when there is a stoppage of any kind.

At length they all melt away, descend the stairs with a last buzzing
accompaniment of civilities and polite phrases finished from one step
to another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone
in the unfriendly empty apartment, where the mats are still littered
with the little cups of tea, the absurd little pipes, and the
miniature trays.

"Let us watch them go away!" said Yves, leaning out. At the door of
the garden is a renewal of the same salutations and curtsies, and
then the two groups of women separate, their bedaubed paper lanterns
fade away trembling in the distance, balanced at the extremity of
flexible canes which they hold in their finger-tips, as one would hold
a fishing-rod in the dark to catch night-birds. The procession of the
unfortunate Mdlle. Jasmin mounts upwards, towards the mountain, while
that of Mdlle. Chrysanthème winds downwards by a narrow old street,
half stairway, half goat-path, which leads to the town.

Then we also depart. The night is fresh, silent, exquisite, the
eternal song of the cicalas fills the air. We can still see the red
lanterns of my new family, dwindling away in the distance, as they
descend and gradually become lost in that yawning abyss, at the bottom