astonished that such sounds could mean anything, astonished, too, at
their being understood. We started, he running at full speed, I dragged
along and jerked about in his light chariot, wrapped in oilcloth, shut up
as if in a box--both of us unceasingly drenched all the while, and
dashing all around us the water and mud of the sodden ground.

"To the Garden of Flowers," I had said, like a habitual frequenter of the
place, and quite surprised at hearing myself speak. But I was less
ignorant about Japan than might have been supposed. Many of my friends,
on their return home from that country, had told me about it, and I knew
a great deal; the Garden of Flowers is a tea-house, an elegant
rendezvous. There I should inquire for a certain Kangourou-San, who is
at the same time interpreter, laundryman, and confidential agent for the
intercourse of races. Perhaps this very evening, if all went well, I
should be introduced to the bride destined for me by mysterious fate.
This thought kept my mind on the alert during the panting journey we
made, the djin and I, one dragging the other, under the merciless
downpour.

Oh, what a curious Japan I saw that day, through the gaping of my
oilcloth coverings, from under the dripping hood of my little cart! A
sullen, muddy, half-drowned Japan. All these houses, men, and beasts,
hitherto known to me only in drawings; all these, that I had beheld
painted on blue or pink backgrounds of fans or vases, now appeared to me
in their hard reality, under a dark sky, with umbrellas and wooden shoes,
with tucked-up skirts and pitiful aspect.

At times the rain fell so heavily that I closed up tightly every chink
and crevice, and the noise and shaking benumbed me, so that I completely
forgot in what country I was. In the hood of the cart were holes,