There are long cries before any one opens,--furious batterings upon the patient portal,--before the servant, grown conscious of this “concert,” comes to recognize the stranger deposited on a litter in the midst of his porters, before the door. For here there is no deep-sounding bell, no button which, by the pulling of a wire attached through the walls to secret mechanism, sets off a sudden explosion, like the squeal of a beast that one pinches. The Black Mountain is the quarter where the old families live, and the silence is profound. The space that Europeans would reserve for recreation and games, the Chinese consecrate to retreat. In this animal honeycomb, between these streets seething with an unclean humanity, they reserve wide unused spaces,--empty enclosures that are the inheritance of some distinguished person, and that cloister his household gods. Only a noble roof can possess the enormous shade of these banyans older than the city, and of these vines which droop under the weight of their purple globes. I have entered. I am waiting all alone in the little parlor. It is four o’clock, and the rain has ceased,--or is it still raining? The earth has received its fill of water; the soaked leaves breathe freely. As for me, under this somber and friendly sky I know the compunction and peace which one feels after having wept. Facing me is a wall with an uneven coping, where three square windows open, each crossed with porcelain bars imitating bamboo. As they adjust a “grille” over diplomatic papers, which isolates the important words, so they have applied this screen of triple openings to the wide countryside of trees and water, and have reduced it to a single theme repeated as in a triptych. The frame defines the picture; the bars, which let my sight pass, exclude me, and, better than a closed and bolted door, make certain that I remain inside. My host does not arrive. I am alone. THE RICE It is our very teeth that we sink in the earth, in this plow that we plant there; and even now our bread eats there as we shall eat. At home, in the cold north, it is the sun who kneads our bread; he ripens the field as the open fire cooks our pancakes and roasts our meat. With a strong plowshare we open a furrow in the solid earth where that crust of bread is formed which we cut with our knife and grind between our teeth.