However, it will not do to make him cry, on the night of a great festival too, poor little mousko. So we must send a message to Madame Renoncule, that she may not be uneasy about
him, and as there will soon not be a living creature on the footpaths of Diou-djen-dji to laugh at us, we will take it in turn, Yves and I, to carry him on our back, all the way up that climb in the darkness.
And here am I, who did not wish to return this way to-night, dragging a mousmé by the hand, actually carrying an extra burden in the shape of a mousko on my back. What an irony of fate!
As I had expected, all our shutters and doors are closed, bolted and barred; no one expects us, and we have to make a prodigious noise at the door. Chrysanthème sets to work and calls with all her might:
"Ho! Oumé-San-an-an-an!" (In English: "Hi! Madame Pru-u-u-u-une!")
These intonations in her little voice are unknown to me; her longdrawn call in the echoing darkness of midnight has so strange an accent, something so unexpected and wild, that it impresses me with a dismal feeling of far-off exile.
At last Madame Prune appears to open the door to us, only half awake and much astonished; by way of a night-cap she wears a monstrous cotton turban, on the blue ground of which a few white storks are playfully disporting themselves. Holding in the tips of her
fingers with an affectation of graceful fright, the long stalk of her beflowered lantern, she gazes intently into our faces, one after another, to assure herself of our identity; but the poor old lady cannot get over the mousko I am carrying.