Jasmin, a pretty girl of fifteen years, who can be had for $18 or $20 a month (contract cancellable at the end of any month for non-payment), a few dresses of fashionable cut and a pleasant house to live in.Mlle.Jasmin comes to be inspected with one old lady, two old ladies, three old ladies (mamma and aunts), and a dozen friends and neighbors, big and little.

Loti's moral stomach revolts at the thought of buying for his uses a child who looks like a doll, and is shocked at the public parade which has been made of her as a commodity.

He has not yet been initiated into some of the extraordinary customs of Japan, nor yet into some of the distinctions attendant upon those customs.

He learns of one of the latter when he suggests to the broker that he might marry a charming geisha who had taken his fancy at a tea house.

The manner in which the suggestion was received convinced him that he might as well have purposed to marry the devil himself as a professional dancer and singer.