Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/21

 in this new love for a woman, for beautiful Tsubaki-San, who for some mysterious reason had come to him, he did not know whence and how. Her refined speech was that of the court; and he was not slow in discovering that she had been carefully educated in poetry and philosophy, and that she understood not only his art but also his passion for the flowers she resembled so much. Her company only incensed his love for camellias and in loving them he only all the more adored, who from that day lived with him first as his servant, then as his companion, and finally as his gentle sweetheart-wife. Her cheeks burned with a wonderful and unending scale of shades of red under his ardent gaze, her body seemed to him like the supple trunk of a camellia tree, her arms like its branches, her fingers like sensitive leaflets. Sometimes the idea struck him to portray her, and smiling happily she would sit for him; but ever and again his brush painted new camellia flowers, and she was not jealous, on the contrary finding these strange portraits of herself the most beautiful of his work. And there was not a single discord in their happy love; for there never was a woman who could better incite love ja art and stimulate its expression than Tsubaki-San did almost involuntarily, merely by loving and being loved.

The day came, however, when the unheard-of and never-beforbefore [sic]-seen beauty of his paintings was voiced even to the august ears of the emperor; and when the envoys of the highest court brought an assortment of his pictures and screens, the emperor was so enthusiastic that immediately he recalled the Painter of Camellias from exile and in advance honored him with a resplendent court title. A special mission was sent out into the remote mountainous country, which according to the intentions of the court intriguers was to have closed over the exile like water over a stone; but these schemes failed, his art triumphed, and in the intoxication of the moment the Painter of Camellias consented to go to the court to thank the emperor for his favor and to paint for him a large and beautiful picture in several panels on the sliding-screens of the new ceremonial hall in the imperial palace. Vainly the charming eyes of Tsubaki-San wept with tearless sadness and mute presentiment; he talked himself into the idea that shortly he would return to her, just as soon as he had tasted of the humiliation meted out to his former opponents and detractors; and she did not dissuade him with a single word. He, who had never cared for the praise or the censure of the world, now boasted of the amazement which he imagined he would arouse with the work he had in mind, with The Hall of Camellias in the Emperor’s palace, and she smiled with a wilting