So Mlle. Chrysantheme became the wife of Pierre Loti during his stay at
Nagasaki, and then dutifully went home to her mother without breaking
her heart at all. But she was not a geisha, only a mousme--"one of the
prettiest words in the Nipponese language," comments M. Loti, "it seems
almost as if there must be a little moue in the very sound, as if a
pretty, taking little pout, such as they put on, and also a little pert
physiognomy, were described by it."
Lieutenant Pinkerton, equally ignorant with Lieutenant Loti but
uninstructed evidently, marries a geisha whose father had made the
happy dispatch at the request of the Son of Heaven after making a
blunder in his military command. She is Cio-Cio-San, also Madama
Butterfly, and she comes to her wedding with a bevy of geishas or
mousmes (I do not know which) and a retinue of relations. All enjoy the
hospitality of the American officer while picking him to pieces, but
turn from their kinswoman when they learn from an uncle, who is a
Buddhist priest and comes late to the wedding like the wicked fairy in
the stories, that she has attended the Mission school and changed her
religion. Wherefore the bonze curses her: "Hou, hou! Cio-Cio-San, hou,
hou!"
Sharpless, United States Consul at Nagasaki, had not approved of
Pinkerton's adventure, fearing that it might bring unhappiness to the
little woman; but Pinkerton had laughed at his scruples and emptied his
glass to the marriage with an American wife which he hoped to make some
day. Neither Loti nor Long troubles us with the details of so prosaic a
thing as the marriage ceremony; but Puccini and his librettists make
much of it, for it provides the only opportunity for a chorus and the
musician had found delightfully mellifluous Japanese gongs to add a
pretty touch of local color to the music. Cio-Cio-San has been
"outcasted" and Pinkerton comforts her and they make love in the
starlight (after Butterfly has changed her habiliments) like any pair
of lovers in Italy. "Dolce notte! Quante stelle! Vieni, vieni!" for
quantity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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