One corner, which as a last resort we inspect, inspires me with a certain amount of apprehension. It is a low, mysterious loft, against the door of which is stuck, as a thing no longer wanted, a very old pious image: _Kwanon with the thousand arms, and Kwanon with the horses' head_, seated among clouds and flames, and horrible both of them to behold, with their spectral grin. We open the door, and Chrysanthème starts back uttering a fearful cry. I should have thought the robbers were there, had I not seen a little grey creature, rapid and noiseless, rush by her and disappear; a young rat that had been eating rice on the top of a shelf, and, in its alarm, had dashed in her face. XLVIII _September 14th_. Yves has dropped his silver whistle in the sea, the whistle so absolutely indispensable for the maneuvers; and we search the town through all day long, followed by Chrysanthème and Mdlles. La Neige and La Lune, her sisters, in the endeavor to procure another. It is, however, very difficult to find such a thing in Nagasaki; above all, very difficult to explain in Japanese what is a sailor's whistle of the traditional shape, curved and with a little ball at the end to modulate the trills and the various sounds of official orders. For three hours we are sent from shop to shop; at each one they pretend to understand perfectly what is wanted and trace on tissue-paper, with a paint-brush, the addresses of the shops where we shall without fail meet with what we require,--away we go, full of hope, only to encounter some fresh mystification, till our breathless djins get quite bewildered. They understand admirably that we want a thing that will make a noise, music in short; thereupon they offer us instruments of every and the most unexpected shape,--squeakers for Punch-and-Judy voices, dog-whistles, trumpets. Each time it is something more and more absurd, so that at last we are overcome with uncontrollable fits of laughter. Last of all, an aged Japanese optician, who assumes a most knowing air, a look of sublime wisdom, goes off to forage in his back shop, and brings to light a steam fog-horn, a relic from some wrecked steamer. After dinner, the chief event of the evening is a deluge of rain which takes us by surprise as we leave the tea-houses, on our return from our fashionable stroll. It so happened that we were a large party, having with us several mousmé guests, and from the moment that the rain began to fall from the skies, as if out of a watering-pot turned upside down, the band became disorganized. The mousmés run off, with birdlike cries, and take refuge under door-ways, in the shops, under the hoods of the djins.