crowd, the various exhibited articles are placed methodically in a row,
under the full glare of hanging lamps. Hardly any flowers compose the
nosegays, nothing but foliage--some rare and priceless, others chosen, as
if purposely, from the commonest plants, arranged, however, with such
taste as to make them appear new and choice; ordinary lettuce-leaves,
tall cabbage-stalks are placed with exquisite artificial taste in vessels
of marvellous workmanship. All the vases are of bronze, but the designs
are varied according to each changing fancy: some complicated and
twisted, others, and by far the larger number, graceful and simple, but
of a simplicity so studied and exquisite that to our eyes they seem the
revelation of an unknown art, the subversion of all acquired notions of
form.

On turning a corner of a street, by good luck we meet our married
comrades of the 'Triomphante' and Jonquille, Toukisan and Campanule!
Bows and curtseys are exchanged by the mousmes, reciprocal manifestations
of joy at meeting; then, forming a compact band, we are carried off by the
ever-increasing crowd and continue our progress in the direction of the
temple.

The streets gradually ascend (the temples are always built on a height);
and by degrees, as we mount, there is added to the brilliant fairyland of
lanterns and costumes yet another, ethereally blue in the haze of
distance; all Nagasaki, its pagodas, its mountains, its still waters full
of the rays of moonlight, seem to rise with us into the air. Slowly,
step by step, one may say it springs up around, enveloping in one great
shimmering veil all the foreground, with its dazzling red lights and
many-colored streamers.

No doubt we are drawing near, for here are steps, porticoes and monsters