Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/14

 And looking over the land spread out before him, with a happy recognition, in which there lay, nevertheless, a deep note of sadness, he bade these loved objects farewell.

"Fair indeed art thou, Rajagriha, City of the Five Hills! Beautiful are thy environs, richly blessed thy fields, heart-gladdening thy wooded glades gleaming with waters, very pleasant thy clustering hills of rock! For the last time do I behold thy lovely borders from this, the fairest of all places whence thy children love to look upon thee. But once, and once only—on the day when I go hence and look back from the crest of yonder mountain-ridge—shall I see thee again, beloved valley of Rajagriha; then, nevermore!"

And still the Master stood, till at length only two structures, of all in the city before him, towered golden in the sunlight: one, the highest tower in the king's palace, whence Bimbisara had first espied him, when, a young and unknown ascetic, he passed that way, and, by his noble bearing, drew upon himself the notice of the Magadha king; the other, the domelike superstructure of the Indian temple, in which, in the years before his teaching had delivered mankind from bloody superstition, thousands upon thousands of innocent animals were yearly slaughtered in honour of the Deity. Finally, even the pinnacles of the towers slipped down into the rising sea of shadow and were lost to view, and only the cone of golden umbrellas which, rising one above another, crowned the dome of the temple yet glowed, suspended as it were in mid-air, a veritable symbol of the "royal city," flashing and sparkling as the red glow deepened against the dark-blue background of the lofty tree-tops. At this point the Master caught sight of