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Updated: June 3, 2025
Nevertheless, my discomfited air does not escape my visitors. M. Kangourou anxiously inquires: "How do you like her?" And I reply in a low voice, but with great resolution: "Not at all! I won't have that one. Never!" I believe that this remark was almost understood in the circle around me. Consternation was depicted on every face, jaws dropped, and pipes went out.
She wore an expression of ennui, also of a little contempt, as if she regretted her attendance at a spectacle which dragged so much, and was so little amusing. "Monsieur Kangourou, who is that young lady over there, in dark blue?" "Over there, Monsieur? She is called Mademoiselle Chrysantheme. She came with the others you see here; she is only here as a spectator.
But at eight o'clock three persons of the most extraordinary appearance, led by M. Kangourou, present themselves with profound bows at the door of my cabin.
They are only doing a thing that is perfectly admissible in their world, and really it all resembles, more than I could have thought possible, a bona fide marriage. "But what fault do you find with the little girl?" asks M. Kangourou, in consternation.
M. Kangourou brought a little laundry bill, which he wished respectfully to hand to me, with a profound bend of the whole body, the correct pose of the hands on the knees, and a long, snake-like hiss.
Really short of marrying a china ornament, I should find it difficult to choose better. At this moment enters M. Kangourou, clad in a suit of gray tweed, which might have come from La Belle Jardiniere or the Pont Neuf, with a pot hat and white thread gloves. His countenance is at once foolish and cunning; he has hardly a nose, hardly any eyes. "You speak French, M. Kangourou?"
It seemed extraordinary that the quaint words, the curious phrases I had learned during our exile at the Pescadores Islands by sheer dint of dictionary and grammar, without attaching the least sense to them should mean anything. But so it seemed, however, for I was at once understood. I wished in the first place to speak to one M. Kangourou, who is interpreter, laundryman, and matrimonial agent.
Later, no doubt, when I understand Japanese affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal: one would really suppose I had talked of marrying the devil. At this point M. Kangourou suddenly calls to mind one Mademoiselle Jasmin. Heavens! how was it he had not thought of her at once?
Then ensue long discourses in Japanese, arguments without end. M. Kangourou, who is laundryman and low scamp in French only, has returned for these discussions to the long formulas of his country.
It is too great a condescension on your part. However, anything to oblige you." He guesses at the first words what I require from him. "Of course," he replies, "we shall see about it at once. In a week's time, as it happens, a family from Simonoseki, in which there are two charming daughters, will be here!" "What! in a week! You don't know me, Monsieur Kangourou!
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