By this time, four officers of my ship are married like myself, and inhabiting the slopes of the same suburb. This arrangement is quite an ordinary occurrence, and is brought about without difficulties, mystery, or danger, through the offices of the same M. Kangourou.
As a matter of course, we are on visiting terms with all these ladies.
First, there is our very merry neighbor Madame Campanule, who is little Charles N-----'s wife; then Madame Jonquille, who is even merrier than Campanule, like a young bird, and the daintiest fairy of them all; she has married X-----, a fair northerner who adores her; they are a lover- like and inseparable pair, the only one that will probably weep when the hour of parting comes. Then Sikou-San with Doctor Y-----; and lastly the midshipman Z------ with the tiny Madame Touki-San, no taller than a boot: thirteen years old at the outside, and already a regular woman, full of her own importance, a petulant little gossip. In my childhood I was sometimes taken to the Learned Animals Theatre, and I remember a certain Madame de Pompadour, a principal role, filled by a gayly dressed old monkey; Touki-San reminds me of her.