22

Back at Rokujo~ towards the end of the year, Akikonomu arranged the final jubilee observances, readings at the seven great Nara temples and forty temples in and near the capital. To the former she sent forty bolts of cotton and to the latter four hundred double bolts of silk. She was much in Genji's debt, and never again would she have such an opportunity to show her gratitude. She wanted everything to be as her late mother and father would have had it; but since Genji's wish to avoid display had frustrated even the emperor's hopes, she limited herself to a small part of what she would have wished to do.

“I have seen it happen so often,” said Genji. “People make a great thing of fortieth birthdays and promptly they die. Let us speak softly this time, and wait for something really memorable.

But she was, after all, empress, and what she arranged was inevitably magnificent. She was hostess at a banquet in the main hall of her southwest quarter, similar in most of its details to Murasaki's Nijo~ banquet. The gifts for the important guests were as at a state banquet. For royal princes there were sets of ladies' robes, very imaginatively chosen, and, after their several ranks, the other guests received white robes, also for ladies, and bolts of cloth. Among the fine old objects (it was like a display of the very finest) were some famous belts and swords which she had inherited from her father and which were so laden with memory that several of the guests were in tears. We have all read romances which list every gift and offering at such affairs, but I am afraid that they rather bore me; nor am I able to provide a complete guest list.