malignant beasts.

And the disturbing intensity of expression reigning over inanimate
nature, contrasts with the almost absolute blank of the human
countenance, with the smiling foolishness of the simple little folk who
meet one's gaze, as they patiently carry on their minute trades in the
gloom of their tiny open-fronted houses. Workmen squatted on their
heels, carving with their imperceptible tools the droll or odiously
obscene ivory ornaments, marvellous cabinet curiosities which have made
Japan so famous with the European amateurs who have never seen it.
Unconscious artists tracing with steady hand on a background of lacquer
or of porcelain traditional designs learned by heart, or transmitted to
their brains by a process of heredity through thousands of years;
automatic painters, whose storks are similar to those of M. Sucre, with
the inevitable little rocks, or little butterflies eternally the same.
The least of these illuminators, with his insignificant, eyeless face,
possesses at his fingers' ends the maximum of dexterity in this art of
decoration, light and wittily incongruous, which threatens to invade us
in France, in this epoch of imitative decadence, and which has become the
great resource of our manufacturers of cheap "objects of art."

Is it because I am about to leave this country, because I have no longer
any link to bind me to it, any resting-place on its soil, that my spirit
is ready on the wing? I know not, but it seems to me I have never as
clearly seen and comprehended it as to-day. And more even than ever do
I find it little, aged, with worn-out blood and worn-out sap; I feel more
fully its antediluvian antiquity, its centuries of mummification, which
will soon degenerate into hopeless and grotesque buffoonery, as it comes
into contact with Western novelties.