The houses we pass by are all thrown open, and decorated exquisitely with flowers and foliage. It is a scene of fairy-like beauty, and Mousmé at my side, upon whom I have to look down to admire, is a fairy.
She is getting tired; Aki is dragging on her arm, and I am glad when the climb up is done, and we are at last at the bottom of the first flight of the temple steps.
Below us once more, as from our verandah (only from a different and almost opposite point) we see the town and the land-locked bay flooded in a silver haze of moonlight, which fails, however, to make the crimson and golden reflection from the thousands of lanterns less apparent.
The scene is like nothing that can be imagined in beauty, and all around us appears to be enveloped in a veil of impalpable light.
We are close to the portico of the temple, and we pass underneath it and enter the courtyard, carried onward by the pressure of the multitude from behind.
We pass two enormous white-and-blue porcelain lanterns with encircling serpents of mythological type, and then we are in fairyland again.
Mousmé heaves a little sigh of delight; her colour is deepened by the crimson of excitement, and her eyes are dancing like fire-flies. Aki is lost, and we forget all about him. He will be all right. There are scores of other children straying about, and no one seems to take any notice. Besides, they mostly wear masks, and blow intermittently upon crystal horns, the noise of which reminds me of the irate gobble-gobble of turkeys engaged in a farmyard fracas.
“Cy-reel, is England like this?” Mousmé asks in an excited whisper.
“No,” I am forced to admit, though foreseeing the inevitable rejoinder.