Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/263

Rh body and then rub their own in the same part, to banish every pain, great or small, to which the human frame is subject. As they wandered from one god to another, Beauregard questioned O Maru about her faith, which he found to be simple and firm. Once she had seen with O Kiku a picture of hell at a temple festival, in which fiery demons were inflicting such tortures on unbelievers that, though their own belief was orthodox, she and her friend had cried themselves to sleep. It occurred to the Frenchman to ask whether she had no fear of being punished for living with him as his wife, but she replied that she had never heard that that was sinful, unless she had been promised to some one else. He asked her what was the use of giving rice to the souls of the dead, and whether she thought they would eat it; but she explained that, whereas living people eat rice, the hotoke, or spirits, only eat the soul of the rice, which is there, although we cannot see it. She believed in prayer, fasting, and amulets, but thought it wasteful to spend more than five rin (about one halfpenny) a month on the gods, since they required no clothing and very little food.

From Nagano the pair travelled to Kyōto, where they remained until the end of their six weeks' honeymoon. There I saw a great deal of Beauregard, who was equally enamoured of Japanese art and his Japanese wife. His days would be spent in visits to those temples where good specimens of the Shijō and Korin schools were jealously kept, but as he had letters of introduction from an eminent professor and painter to the authorities, he had exceptional opportunities of pursuing his passionate study of the Kyōto Renaissance painters. All the treasures of Daitokuji