Yves treats this wife of mine as if she were a plaything, and
continually assures me that she is charming.

Myself, I find her as exasperating as the cicalas on my roof; and when
I am alone at home, side by side with this little creature twanging
the strings of her long-necked guitar, in front of this marvelous
panorama of pagodas and mountains,--I am overcome by a sadness full of
tears.




X.


_July 13th_.

Last night, as we lay under the Japanese roof of Diou-djen-dji,--under
the thin and ancient wooden roof scorched by a hundred years of
sunshine, vibrating at the least sound, like the stretched-out
parchment of a tamtam,--in the silence which prevails at two o'clock
in the morning, we heard overhead a regular wild huntsman's chase
passing at full gallop:

"Nidzoumi!" ("the mice!"), said Chrysanthème.

Suddenly, the word brings back to my mind yet another, spoken in a
very different language, in a country far away from here: "Setchan!" a
word heard elsewhere, a word that has likewise been whispered in my
ear by a woman's voice, under similar circumstances, in a moment of