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In the vast flood of midday sunshine, to the quivering noise of the cicalas, I mount up to Diou-djen-dji. The paths are solitary, the plants drooping in the heat. Here, however, is Madame Jonquille, taking the air, in the bright sunshine of the grasshoppers, sheltering her dainty figure and her charming face under an immense paper parasol, a huge circle, closely ribbed and fantastically striped.
It is one o'clock in the morning before we are back at Diou-djen-dji. We first get Yves to bed in the little paper room he has already once occupied. Then we go to bed ourselves, after the inevitable preparations, the smoking of the little pipe, and the tap! tap! tap! tap! on the edge of the box.
"I must positively get leave to go on shore this evening," he says, while I endeavor to shake myself awake, "if it is only to help you to dismantle and pack up." He gazes through my port-hole, raising his glance toward the green summits, in the direction of Diou-djen-dji and our echoing old cottage, hidden from us by a turn of the mountain.
They shout from one to another their outlandish names, prolonging them indefinitely in the now silent night, in the reverberations of the damp air after the great summer rain. At length they are all collected and united again, these tiny personages with narrow eyes and no brains, and we return to Diou-djen-dji all wet through.
She is absolutely and exactly what I want; he will go to-morrow, or this very evening, to make the necessary overtures to the parents of this young person, who live a long way off, on the opposite hill, in the suburb of Diou-djen-dji. She is a very pretty girl of about fifteen.
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.
After much manoeuvring we took up our old moorings in the harbor, at the foot of the Diou-djen-dji hills.
I am now a long way from my home, and am compelled to cross by boat the whole breadth of the bay when I wish to see Chrysantheme; for the dock is situated on the shore, opposite to Diou-djen-dji.
Tonight Yves is off duty three hours earlier than I; occasionally this happens, according to the arrangement of the watches. At those times he lands first, and goes up to wait for me at Diou-djen-dji. From the deck I can see him through my glass, climbing up the green mountain-path; he walks with a brisk, rapid step, almost running; what a hurry he seems in to rejoin little Chrysantheme!
After a great uproar of maneuvering we took up our old moorings in the roadstead, at the foot of the Diou-djen-dji hills.
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