39

He spent the whole of one dark, snowy day gazing out upon that dreariest of months—as people will have it—the last of the year. In the evening the moon rose in a clear sky. He went to the veranda and lifted the blinds. The vesper bells came faintly from the monastery. So another day had passed, he said to himself as he listened.

“My heart goes after yon retreating moon.

No home, this world, in which to dwell forever.”

A wind having come up, he went to lower the shutters. In brilliant moonlight, the mountains were reflected in the icy river as in a mirror. However much care might go into his new house, he would be unable to fabricate a scene so lovely. Come back for but a moment, he whispered, and enjoy it with me.

“Deep in the Snowy Mountains* would I vanish,

In search of the brew that is death for those who love.”

If, like the Lad of the Snowy Mountains, he had an accommodating monster of whom he might inquire about a stanza, he would have an excuse to fling himself away.+ A less than perfectly enlightened heart our young sage had!

Seemingly unshakable in his serenity, he would talk with the women. The younger ones quite fell in love with him, and the older ones sighed again to think what a hapless lady they had served.

“She lost her grip on herself because she took the prince's odd behavior too seriously. The whole world was laughing at them, she was sure; but she kept it all to herself. She did not want our other lady to know how worried she was. With everything shut up inside her she quietly stopped eating, and that was that. You couldn't always be sure what she was thinking, but there wasn't much that she missed. The beginning of it all was her father, and then there was her sister—she was sure she had done exactly what he had told her not to do.” They would recount little incidents, and at the end of each interview the household was abandoned to tears.