Il sourit dans la barbe du masque, Et son pas plus hatif fait reluire au soleil Les deux antennes d'or qui tremblent a son casque.
"Lightly touching her _biva_ with heedless finger, she has perceived, through the finely woven bamboo screen, the conqueror, lovingly thought of, approach over the dazzling level of the beach.
"It is he.

With his swords at his side he advances, holding up his fan.
The red girdle and the scarlet tassel appear in sharply cut relief against the dark armour; and upon his shoulder glitters a crest of Hizen or of Tokungawa.
"This handsome warrior sheathed with his scales and plates of metal, under his bronze, his silk and glimmering lacquer, seems a crustacean, gigantic, black and vermilion.
"He has caught sight of her.

Under the beaver of the war mask he smiles, and his quickened step makes to glitter in the sun the two antennae of gold that quiver upon his helmet." The comparison of a warrior in full armour to a gigantic crab or lobster, especially lobster, is not exactly new.

Victor Hugo has used it before in French literature, just as Carlyle has used it in English literature; indeed the image could not fail to occur to the artist in any country where the study of armour has been carried on.

But here the poet does not speak of any particular creature; he uses only the generic term, crustacean, the vagueness of which makes the comparison much more effective.