My household maintains a more dignified air, though it is none the less dreary. I had indeed thought of a divorce, but have really no good reason for offering Chrysanthème such a gratuitous affront; moreover there is another more imperative reason why I should remain quiet: I too have had difficulties with the civilian authorities.
Day before yesterday, M. Sucre quite upset, Madame Prune almost swooning, and Mdlle. Oyouki bathed in tears, stormed my rooms. The Niponese police agents had called and threatened them with the law for letting rooms outside of the European concession to a Frenchman morganatically married to a Japanese; and the terror of being prosecuted brought them to me, with a thousand apologies, but the humble request that I should leave.
The next day I therefore went off, accompanied by the wonderfully tall friend, who expresses himself better than I do in Japanese, to the register office, with the full intention of making a terrible row.
In the language of this exquisitely polite people, terms of abuse are totally wanting; when very angry, one is obliged to be satisfied with using the thou, mark of inferiority and the
familiar conjugation, habitual towards those of low birth. Seating myself on the table used for weddings, in the midst of all the flurried little policemen, I open the conversation in the following terms:
"In order that thou shouldest leave me in peace in the suburb I am inhabiting, what bribe must I offer thee, set of little beings more contemptible than any mere street porter?"
Great and mute scandal, silent consternation, and low bows greet my words.
"Certainly," they at last reply, my honorable person shall not be molested, indeed they ask for nothing better. Only, in order to subscribe to the laws of the country, I ought to have come here and given my name and that of the young person that—with whom—
"Oh! that is going too far! I came here on purpose, contemptible creatures, not three weeks ago!"
Then taking up myself the civil register, and turning over the pages rapidly, I found my signature and beside it the little hieroglyphics drawn by Chrysanthème: