Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/20

 it became possible to guess from a picture whether the day had been sunny or misty, whether the sun were already in the west or had not yet reached the zenith, whether the season were spring or late autumn, whether the flower mourned or exulted, whether it were foreordained to premature death or to living out its life in full. His camellias seemed to stand out from his pictures in such a life-like manner that many a screen of his gave the impression of being a, an alcove in which was placed a vase with a camellia branch, or of a windovwindow [sic] opened into a wood cf camellias. Sometimes he would play with some bizarre fancy: he would paint a praying mantis or a noisy cicada on a camellia twig whose buds were striped in pink and white, and the earthen vessel in which the camellia twig was placed would be ornamented on its slender body with unbelievably plastic camellia flowers, moulded as if by the hands of a sculptor. This, however, was only play; his leading passion was the scarlet magnificence or the carmine rapture or the pink delicacy of live flowers, the lay of live branches, the sensitive turning of living leaves. His hold on perspective grew ever firmer, his way of putting movement into immobility became ever more daring; and when after a certain length of time his fame began to spread from province to province, the courts of the nobles began to whisper about this miraculous painter of the before unnoticed, whom the emperor’s court had driven into exile.

To all of this the painter of camellias paid as little attention as to his former failure, he painted and loved his camellias so much that he could not think of any other object worthy of his brush, nor of any womah worthy of his love. But one day when returning from a stroll he met in the pass of Shimizu a charming young girl, whom he had never seen before, and who was attired in a splendid court gown, the like of which surely had never appeared before in that mountainous region. He was amazed by her beauty and by her mien; but still more was he surprised at the perturbation that had laid hold of him with his first glance at this girl. They stopped, facing each other, and for a time both were silent; nevertheless even in this silence his soul spoke, and she dropped her eyes; in that silence his heart went out to her, and she accepted it in exchange for her own. And then she told him never to ask her about her origin, but to let it suffice that she had come after him and to him, because, and that her name was Tsubaki, Camellia. His wonder increased. Tsubaki was her mame, and it was that he loved more than all the other flowers of earth and far more than anything he ever saw or could imagine in this imperfect world. At any rate he would not be unfaithful to his camellias