XXVII.


More cheerful are the noises of the morning: the cocks crowing, the
wooden panels all round the neighborhood sliding back upon their
rollers; or the strange cry of some little fruit-hawker, patrolling
our lofty suburb in the early dawn. And the grasshoppers absolutely
seem to chirp more loudly, to celebrate the return of the sunlight.

Above all, rises to our ears from below the sound of Madame Prune's
long prayers, ascending through the floor, monotonous as the song of a
somnambulist, regular and soothing as the splash of a fountain. It
lasts three-quarters of an hour at least; it drones along, a rapid
flow of words in a high nasal key; from time to time, when the
inattentive Spirits are not listening, it is accompanied by a clapping
of dry palms, or by harsh sounds from a kind of wooden clapper made of
two discs of mandragora root; it is an uninterrupted stream of prayer;
its flow never ceases, and the quavering continues without stopping,
like the bleating of an old nanny-goat in delirium.

_"After having washed the hands and feet"_ say the sacred books, _"the
great God Ama-Térace-Omi-Kami, who is the royal power of Japan, must
be invoked; the manes of all the defunct Emperors descended from him
must also be invoked; next, the manes of all his personal ancestors,
to the furthest generation; the Spirits of the Air and Sea; the
Spirits of all secret and impure places; the Spirits of the tombs of