My choice rests upon a singular blue and pink dragon a couple of inches long, which will have a fine effect upon my chest on the side opposite the heart.
Then follows an hour and a half of irritation and positive pain. Stretched out on my bunk and delivered over to the tender mercies of these personages, I stiffen myself and submit to the million imperceptible pricks they inflict. When by chance a little blood flows, confusing the outline by a stream of red, one of the artists hastens to staunch it with his lips, and I make no objections, knowing that this is the Japanese manner, the method used by their doctors for the wounds of both man and beast.
A piece of work as minute and fine as that of an engraver upon stone is slowly executed on my person; and their lean hands harrow and worry me with automatic precision.
At length it is finished, and the tattooers, falling back with an air of satisfaction to contemplate their work, declare it will be lovely.
I dress myself quickly to go on shore, and take advantage of my last hours in Japan.
The heat is fearful to-day: the powerful September sun falls with a certain melancholy
upon the yellowing leaves; it is a day of clear burning heat after an almost chilly morning.
Like yesterday, it is during the drowsy noon that I ascend to my lofty suburb, by deserted pathways filled only with light and silence.
I noiselessly open the door of my dwelling, and enter cautiously on tiptoe, for fear of Madame Prune.
At the foot of the staircase, upon the white mats, by the side of the little clogs and little sandals which are always lying about the vestibule, there is a great array of luggage ready for departure, which I recognize at a glance,—pretty dark-colored dresses, familiar to my sight, carefully folded and wrapped in blue towels tied at the four corners. I even fancy I feel a little sad when I catch sight of a corner of the famous box of letters and souvenirs peeping out of one of these bundles, in which ray portrait by Uyeno now reposes among divers photographs of mousmés. A sort of long-necked mandolin, also ready for departure, lies on the top of the pile in its case of figured silk. It resembles the flitting of some gypsy, or rather it reminds me of an engraving in a book of fables I owned in my childhood: the whole thing is exactly like the slender wardrobe and the long guitar which the Cicala who had sung all the summer, carried upon her back