On the appointed day I took him to the Society of Authors. I was quite surprised to note that the gentlemen of the committee had turned out to a man to receive him. We were ushered into the committee room, where these gentlemen awaited us, seated round a large table. Sardou, who presided, received us with a very appropriate address. He greeted Kawakami as the man who first forged a literary bond between France and Japan. He warmly congratulated Kawakami on having been the first manager who had the courage to bring a company from his distant native land to a city where no one understood a word of Japanese. He complimented Kawakami and complimented him again, and ended by calling him his “dear comrade.” After which he sat down. There was silence, and I knew that they were expecting some response from Kawakami. But he seemed in no wise to suspect that he had furnished the theme for the discourse just ended. He remained calmly in his seat and surveyed the gentlemen one by one. I realised the necessity for immediate action. Some one must sacrifice himself. In the present crisis, cost what it may, it devolved on me to intervene. Turning toward Kawakami, I asked, in pantomime: “Do you understand?” He shook his head to say no. Thereupon M. Sardou added: “Speak to him, Miss Fuller. Translate to him what has just been said.” Finally, since there was nothing else for it, I summoned all my strength, and at some length I explained in good English to Kawakami, who did not understand a syllable of it, that this speech Sardou had prepared expressly for him because he was a Japanese author, and because the French were greatly pleased that he had brought his Japanese company to Paris, and that the Society of Authors received him with pleasure. I then explained to Kawakami, with the indispensable assistance of appropriate gestures, that the time had arrived for him to get up and say something in Japanese. Was it not the essential fact that these gentlemen believed that M. Sardou’s words had been translated? Kawakami immediately arose and delivered an address which must have been most carefully thought out. To judge from the seriousness of the orator’s aspect, and from the length of his harangue Kawakami is a great political orator. When he had finished he sat down, while everybody looked at him admiringly, with beaming faces. No one, however, had understood a single word of what he said. I, naturally, was in the same plight as the others. There ensued a second somewhat painful silence, broken by Sardou asking: “What did he say, Miss Loie?” That was a poser. For there was no reason why I should understand Japanese any better than these gentlemen of the Society of Authors.