of ancestors.

In her trembling old woman's falsetto, Madame Prune sings all this,
without omitting anything, at a pace which almost takes away her breath.

And very strange it is to hear: at length it seems hardly a human voice;
it sounds like a series of magic formulas, unwinding themselves from an
inexhaustible roller, and escaping to take flight through the air. By
its very weirdness, and by the persistency of its incantation, it ends by
producing in my half-awakened brain an almost religious impression.

Every day I wake to the sound of this Shintoist litany chanted beneath
me, vibrating through the exquisite clearness of the summer mornings--
while our night-lamps burn low before the smiling Buddha, while the
eternal sun, hardly risen, already sends through the cracks of our wooden
panels its bright rays, which dart like golden arrows through our
darkened dwelling and our blue gauze tent.

This is the moment at which I must rise, descend hurriedly to the sea by
grassy footpaths all wet with dew, and so regain my ship.

Alas! in the days gone by, it was the cry of the muezzin which used to
awaken me in the dark winter mornings in faraway, night-shrouded
Stamboul.




CHAPTER XXVIII