Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/287

 ascetic saying, "A slut's corner is domestic life," echoed again and again through my desolate heart. On that splendid Terrace of the Sorrowless, under the open, star-filled, and moonlit heaven, my love had its home. How could I, fool, ever have thought to send it begging to that sluttish domesticity in Ujjeni, in order that quarrelsome women might asperse it with their invective.

I crawled back to my cell with difficulty, to stretch myself on a sick-bed. This sudden annihilation of my feverishly excited hopes was too much for powers of resistance already weakened by months of inner strife. With matchless self-sacrifice, Medini nursed me day and night. But as soon as my spirit, buoyed up by her tender care, was able to raise itself above the pain and inflammation of the fever, the plans I had formed for my journey developed in another direction. Not to the place where I had sent Angulimala, but to the place whither he now, of his own initiative, journeyed, did I want to make my pilgrimage. I would follow in the footsteps of the Master till I overtook him. Was I not done with my sentence? Had I not learned in the deepest sense that, when loves comes, suffering also comes? And so I might, I thought, seek the Buddha, and gain new life from the power of the Holy One in order to be able to press farther forward to the highest goal.

I confided my intention to the good Medini, who at once adopted the unexpected suggestion with wild enthusiasm, and painted, in her childish fantasy, how splendid it would be to roam through exquisite regions, free as the birds of the air when the migratory season calls them to other and far-distant skies.

Of course, for the first thing, we were obliged to wait patiently till I had regained sufficient strength. And