Madame Chrysanthème | Page 5

is the journal of a summer of my life, in which I have
changed nothing, not even the dates, thinking that in our efforts to
arrange matters we succeed often only in disarranging them. Although
the most important role may appear to devolve on Madame
Chrysantheme, it is very certain that the three principal points of
interest are myself, Japan, and the effect produced on me by that
country.

Do you recollect a certain photograph--rather absurd, I must admit--
representing that great fellow Yves, a Japanese girl, and myself,
grouped as we were posed by a Nagasaki artist? You smiled when I
assured you that the carefully attired little damsel placed between us
had been one of our neighbors. Kindly receive my book with the same
indulgent smile, without seeking therein a meaning either good or bad,
in the same spirit in which you would receive some quaint bit of
pottery, some grotesquely carved ivory idol, or some fantastic trifle
brought to you from this singular fatherland of all fantasy.
Believe me, with the deepest respect, Madame la Duchesse, Your
affectionate PIERRE LOTI.

INTRODUCTION
We were at sea, about two o'clock in the morning, on a fine night,
under a starry sky.
Yves stood beside me on the bridge, and we talked of the country,
unknown to both, to which destiny was now carrying us. As we were to
cast anchor the next day, we enjoyed our anticipations, and made a
thousand plans.
"For myself," I said, "I shall marry at once."
"Ah!" said Yves, with the indifferent air of one whom nothing can
surprise.
"Yes--I shall choose a little, creamy-skinned woman with black hair
and cat's eyes. She must be pretty and not much bigger than a doll. You
shall have a room in our house. It will be a little paper house, in a green
garden, deeply shaded. We shall live among flowers, everything around
us shall blossom, and each morning our dwelling shall be filled with
nosegays--nosegays such as you have never dreamed of."
Yves now began to take an interest in these plans for my future
household; indeed, he would have listened with as much confidence if I

had expressed the intention of taking temporary vows in some
monastery of this new country, or of marrying some island queen and
shutting myself up with her in a house built of jade, in the middle of an
enchanted lake.
I had quite made up my mind to carry out the scheme I had unfolded to
him. Yes, led on by ennui and solitude, I had gradually arrived at
dreaming of and looking forward to such a marriage. And then, above
all, to live for awhile on land, in some shady nook, amid trees and
flowers! How tempting it sounded after the long months we had been
wasting at the Pescadores (hot and arid islands, devoid of freshness,
woods, or streamlets, full of faint odors of China and of death).
We had made great way in latitude since our vessel had quitted that
Chinese furnace, and the constellations in the sky had undergone a
series of rapid changes; the Southern Cross had disappeared at the same
time as the other austral stars; and the Great Bear, rising on the horizon,
was almost on as high a level as it is in the sky above France. The
evening breeze soothed and revived us, bringing back to us the memory
of our summer-night watches on the coast of Brittany.
What a distance we were, however, from those familiar coasts! What a
tremendous distance!

MME. CHRYSANTHEME
CHAPTER I
THE MYSTERIOUS LAND
At dawn we beheld Japan.
Precisely at the foretold moment the mysterious land arose before us,
afar off, like a black dot in the vast sea, which for so many days had
been but a blank space.
At first we saw nothing by the rays of the rising sun but a series of tiny

pink-tipped heights (the Fukai Islands). Soon, however, appeared all
along the horizon, like a misty veil over the waters, Japan itself; and
little by little, out of the dense shadow, arose the sharp, opaque outlines
of the Nagasaki mountains.
The wind was dead against us, and the strong breeze, which steadily
increased, seemed as if the country were blowing with all its might, in a
vain effort to drive us away from its shores. The sea, the rigging, the
vessel itself, all vibrated and quivered as if with emotion.
CHAPTER II
STRANGE SCENES
By three o'clock in the afternoon all these far-off objects were close to
us, so close that they overshadowed us with their rocky masses and
deep green thickets.
We entered a shady channel between two high ranges of mountains,
oddly symmetrical--like stage scenery, very pretty, though unlike
nature. It seemed as if Japan were