Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti
page 89 of 199 (44%)
page 89 of 199 (44%)
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Come, let us at once prepare Yves' room. Chrysanthème, quite elated at the prospect of having her big friend near her, sets to work with a good will; moreover, the task is an easy one, we have only to slip three or four paper panels in their grooves, to make at once a separate room or compartment in the great box we live in. I had thought that these panels were entirely white; but no! on each of them is a group of two storks painted in gray tints in those inevitable attitudes consecrated by Japanese art: one bearing aloft its proud head and haughtily raising its leg, the other scratching itself. Oh these storks! how sick one gets of them, at the end of a month spent in Japan! Yves is now in bed and sleeping under our roof. Sleep has come to him sooner than to me to-night; for somehow I fancy I had seen long glances exchanged between him and Chrysanthème. I have left this little creature in his hands like a toy, and I begin to fear lest I should have thrown some perturbation in his mind. I do not trouble my head about this little Japanese girl. But Yves,--it would be decidedly wrong on his part, and would greatly diminish my faith in him. We hear the rain falling on our old roof; the cicalas are mute; odors of wet earth reach us from the gardens and the mountain. I feel terribly dreary in this room to-night; the noise of the little pipe irritates me more than usual, and as Chrysanthème crouches in front of her smoking-box, I suddenly discover in her an air of low breeding, in the very worst sense of the word. |
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