Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/237

 the whole way, was stirred up by the multitude that, like ourselves—the most of them, however, on foot—had come out to see and hear the Buddha.

We soon reached the entrance to the forest. Here we had the wagons stopped, and pursued our way on foot, followed by servants who bore the votive offerings we had brought with us.

Since that night when we had taken leave of one another here, I had not been in this wood. And when I now, in the same company, entered its cool shade, I was overcome by so piercing a breath of memory—an odour that seemed to have been stored up for me here till its concentrated sweetness had, with the lapse of years, become poison—that I remained standing like one stupefied.

It seemed to me as if my love, awakened to its full strength, had placed itself in my way, charging me with desertion and with treachery. For I had not come there, as I knew, to give it fresh nourishment by inhaling the odour of memory, but to seek peace for my disappointed and tortured heart. And could not that, with justice, be called forgetting love, wilfully renouncing it? Was not that the violation of my word, and cowardly treachery?

In such fearful uncertainty did I stand there, undecided whether to go on or to turn back—to the great disappointment of Medini, who danced with impatience when others overtook us.

The look of the interior of the forest, however, softly illumined by the golden rays off the late afternoon sun; the gentle admonitory rustle and whisper of the leaves; the people who at once on entering grew silent and looked around expectantly and almost timidly; here and there at the foot, of some great tree, an ascetic, wrapped in the folds of his yellow cloak, his legs crossed beneath him,