“Well, little Chrysanthème, let us part good friends; one last kiss even, if you like. I took you to amuse me; you have not perhaps succeeded very well, but after all you have done what you could: given me your little face, your little curtseys, your little music; in short, you have been pleasant enough in your Japanese way.”
So wrote French sailor Louis Marie Julien Viaud — under the pen name of Pierre Loti — in his 1887 novel “Madame Chrysanthème,” which later became one of the models for Giacomo Puccini’s famed 1908 opera, “Madame Butterfly.”
The young Chrysanthème, who in the opera is named Butterfly, is tricked into the marriage, thinking it real, when in fact the French sailor (in the opera, an American sailor named Pinkerton) is just looking for a companion during his Nagasaki posting. When that posting concludes, a few months later, he ups and leaves with nothing but the offer of a last kiss, “if you like.”
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