Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/264

228 and Chionin, of Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji, were shown to him. Sometimes he would spend many hours among the early sculptures of Nara, or avail himself of an invitation to scan the private collection of a rich shipowner at Ōsaka. His contempt for Hokusai and Hiroshigi was unbounded; words could not express his dislike for what he called "the shallow, meretricious judgment of de Goncourt." I await with considerable interest the brochure which he intends to publish by means of the Mercure de France for the edification and confusion of French connoisseurs. But O Maru interested me more than Okyō's fish and Sōsen's monkeys. I would often spend the evening with them, and, as we conversed hotly in our barbarian tongues, she would sit contentedly sewing and humming to herself, delighted to make tea or furnish information about her fatherland. Her own curiosity was seldom excited, but now and then she betrayed depths of astounding ignorance. One night Beauregard had been reading me a chapter from Anatole France's delightful "Le Livre de mon Ami," in which that writer thus describes a characteristic reminiscence of childhood:

"J'étais bien payé de ma peine dès que j'entrais dans la chambre de ces dames; car il y avait là mille choses qui me plongeaient dans 1'extase. Mais rien n'égalait les deux magots de porcelaine qui se tenaient assis sur la cheminée, de chaque côté de la pendule. D'eux-mêmes, ils hochaient la tête et tiraient la langue. J'appris qu'ils venaient de Chine et je me promis d'y aller. La difficulté était de m'y faire conduire par ma bonne. J'avais acquis la certitude que la Chine était derriere l'Arc-de-Triomphe, mais je ne trouvais jamais moyen de pousser jusque-là."