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Rh remark, if made in a quiet, colourless voice, may seem original and interesting; for instance, in conversations about poetry, some quite commonplace piece of criticism will be accepted as very profound merely because it is made in a particular tone of voice. Or again, half a verse from the middle of some little-known poem can make, if produced in the right tone of voice, a deep impression even among people who have no notion what the words imply. Whereas if some one speaks in a disagreeable voice or uses vulgar language, no matter how important or profound are the thoughts which he expresses, nobody will believe that it can possibly be worth while to pay any attention to him. So it was with the Lady from Ōmi. She had a loud rasping voice and in general behaved with no more regard for the impression she was making on those around her than a child screaming in its nurse’s lap. She thus seemed far sillier than she really was. Indeed, her facility in stringing together poems of thirty-one syllables, of the kind in which the beginning of any one poem might just as well be the end of any other, was quite prodigious.

‘But I must be getting ready,’ she now exclaimed. ‘My father told me I was to call on Lady Chūjō, and if I don’t go at once, her ladyship will think I don’t want to meet her. Do you know what? I think I’ll go this very night, for though I can see that my papa thinks the world of me, I shall never get on in this palace unless the ladies are on my side….’ Which again shows that she had more good sense than one would have supposed.

She now sat down at once and addressed the following letter to Lady Chūjō: ‘Honoured Madam, though we have been living these many days past with (as the saying goes) scarce so much as a hurdle between us, I have not hitherto, as they say, ventured to tread upon your shadow, for to tell the honest truth I was in two minds whether I should