The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Shikibu Murasaki

Author:Shikibu, Murasaki
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781101657621
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2006-01-30T16:00:00+00:00

Two monks

“What could possibly prick your conscience this way? His Grace has never betrayed any such feelings. It has surprised and pained him to learn how ill you are, and he seems to be very sorry indeed about it. Why have you said nothing about this, when it worries you so much? I should have been speaking for each of you to the other. By now I suppose it is too late.” He sadly wished that he could turn back time.

“Yes, I should really have talked to you in one of those moments when I felt a little better. Still, it never occurred to me that my hour might come so soon, and I foolishly went on telling myself that one cannot possibly know how long one has yet to live. Please never mention this to anyone else. I have told you, you know, only in order to ask you to speak for me when a suitable occasion arises. Please keep in touch with Her Highness at Ichijō18 whenever it seems proper to do so. His Eminence is certain to learn of her plight, and I hope that you will do what you can to reassure him.”

He must have had much more to say, but he no longer had the strength to speak; instead he gestured with his hand that the Commander should leave him. The monks who were there to pray returned to his side, his parents and the others gathered around him, a great commotion arose, and the weeping Commander withdrew.

The Commander's wife19 was grief-stricken, to say nothing of the Kokiden Consort. So generous was the Intendant's spirit, and so brotherly were his affections, that the wife of His Excellency of the Right20 felt close to him as well, and she therefore mourned him with all her heart and had prayer rites commissioned on his behalf; but no such remedy could heal his affliction,21 and it made no difference. He died as foam melts from the water, without ever managing to see the Princess again.

His feeling for the Princess had never been deep or heartfelt, but he had treated her correctly in all ordinary matters, and since he had always been thoughtful and kind, without undue familiarity, she had never had cause to complain. She reflected on looking back that it must have been the very brevity of his life that had made him so strangely indifferent to the commonplace things of this world, and the thought was so painful that she sank into a pathetic melancholy. Her mother bitterly lamented the cruel ridicule that would be visited on her daughter.22 His Excellency and his wife naturally wished only that they had preceded their son, and they vainly burned with the pain of this break in the proper order of life.

Her Cloistered Highness,23 to whom the Intendant's audacity had never been other than hateful and who did not wish him to live long, pitied him nonetheless when she heard the news. The way he had foreseen the birth

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