7/21 The young Celestial looks out of window. The old one--Ta-lao-ye, that is to say, a person well advanced in years--is incessantly turning over the pages of his book. This volume, a small 32mo, looks like our _Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes_, and is covered in plush, like a breviary, and when it is shut its covers are kept in place by an elastic band. What astonishes me is that the proprietor of this little book does not seem to read it from right to left. Is it not written in Chinese characters? |