five o'clock in the
morning
At this moment the actor and actress , who had retired during dessert , made their entry , one in a coachman 's overcoat , the other in a nurse 's jacket , and they gave us the _ Sonnettes _ with an energy , a go , a dash -- well , it would only be fair to them if Claretie , on the recommendation of Meilhac and Halevy , offers to put them on the pension list of the Comédie Française . At midnight the festival is over . We all retire to our sleeping places . We do not even hear them shouting the names of the stations before we come to Kan-Tcheou , and it is between four and five o'clock in the morning that a halt of forty minutes retains us at the station of that town . The country is changing as the railway runs south of the fortieth degree , so as to skirt the eastern base of the Nan Shan mountains . The desert gradually disappears , villages are not so few , the density of the population increases . Instead of sandy flats , we get verdant plains , and even rice fields , for the neighboring mountains spread their abundant streams over these high regions of the Celestial Empire .