into everyday habits.

Chrysantheme tends the flowers in our bronze vases, dresses herself with
studied care, proud of her socks with the divided big toe, and strums all
day on a kind of long-necked guitar, producing sweet and plaintive
sounds.




CHAPTER VI

MY NEW MENAGE

In our home, everything looks like a Japanese picture: we have folding-
screens, little odd-shaped stools bearing vases full of flowers, and at
the farther end of the apartment, in a nook forming a kind of altar, a
large gilded Buddha sits enthroned in a lotus.

The house is just as I had fancied it should be in the many dreams of
Japan I had had before my arrival, during the long night watches: perched
on high, in a peaceful suburb, in the midst of green gardens; made up of
paper panels, and taken to pieces according to one's fancy, like a
child's toy. Whole families of cicalas chirp day and night under our old
resounding roof. From our veranda we have a bewildering bird's-eye view
of Nagasaki, of its streets, its junks, and its great pagodas, which, at
certain hours, is illuminated at our feet like some scene in fairyland.