Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/152

 doesn't go through the chief streets, but runs through the lanes and squares to the west gate.… I can scarcely realise it. The ground burns beneath my feet—farewell, brother! Thou hast meant well by me, and I shall not fail to conduct thee also to the Master—but now I really cannot delay a moment longer."

And the pilgrim Kamanita dashed out of the hall and ran away along the street as fast as his legs would carry him. But when he reached the city gate of Rajagriha it was not yet opened and he was obliged to wait for a short time—time which seemed to him an eternity, and raised his impatience to the highest pitch.

He employed the minutes, however, in getting from an old woman carrying a basket of vegetables to the town, and who, like himself, was obliged to halt at the gate, exact information with regard to the shortest way—as to how he was to go through such and such a lane, past a little temple to the right, and to the left past a well, and then not to lose sight of a certain tower, so that he might perhaps recover in the town the time he had lost standing outside its walls.

As soon, then, as the gate was opened he dashed recklessly away in the direction indicated. Sometimes he knocked down a few children, anon he brushed with such violence past a woman who was rinsing dishes at the kerbstone that one of these rolled rattling away from her and broke, or he bumped into some water-carrier. But the abuse which followed him fell on deaf ears, so utterly was he possessed by the one thought that soon, so wonderfully soon, he should see the Buddha.

"What rare fortune!" he said to himself. "How many generations pass and have no Buddha sojourn on the earth in their time; and of the generation that has a