Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/212

 realized? Was the Lord Buddha unkind as that, after all? One day he went to Shiba and savagely besieged the priests. They drove him away. He had come to be an annoyance. His offerings were now pitifully small, and himself shabby in the extreme. And he had but the one prayer:

"Hail, Holy Buddha! Wife—child—Hail, Holy Buddha! Namu Amida Butsu!"

They turned him out of the temple. But out under the great trees in the court he made a temple, and there indulged his soul to the full. Away from the cold eyes of the priests, at the foot of a giant cryptomeria, with the summer air to fan him and the leafy dome to shade him, out of control and encouraged by the silence, his prayer was a vociferous challenge to Shaka and all the gods who had baited and deceived him. He shouted anathemas at heaven. He railed upon the gods and defied them. But presently, as if to warn him, the night fell. With awe he remembered who it was that made night and day, and his voice dropped to supplication, the humblest that ever man addressed to gods. He tried to make the Prince of Heaven his friend now. He pleaded and confessed and cajoled with