Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/191

Rh Soon after his return all his original titles were restored and he was accorded the rank of supernumerary President of Council; while his supporters were re-established in offices equivalent to those of which they had been deprived. Indeed so wide an amnesty was proclaimed that the Court soon wore the aspect of a withered tree that one spring morning suddenly begins to sprout again.

A message came summoning Genji to the Palace. Great excitement prevailed among the Court attendants. It seemed to them that he looked more handsome and flourishing than ever. Had he really spent the last three years under such harrowing conditions as rumour had reported? Among the gentlewomen present were some who had served the old Emperor his father and these old ladies, who had always taken his side, now pressed round him chattering and weeping. The Emperor had been somewhat nervous about this interview. Anxious to make a good impression, he had spent an immense while over his toilet. On this particular day he was feeling somewhat stronger; but for a long while he had been seriously out of health and he was looking sadly altered. They talked quietly till nightfall. It was the fifteenth day of the month. The weather was calm and fine and, as he sat in the moonlight, such a host of memories crowded to the young Emperor’s mind that he shed a few tears. He was indeed at that time full of the darkest forebodings. ‘Nothing entertaining has happened here,’ he said at last. ‘I used to like it when you played to me; but of course it is a long time since you did that….’ Genji answered with the poem: ‘For as many years as the leech-baby could not stand upon its feet have I been set adrift upon the wide plains of the sea.’ The Emperor, who felt the sting of this allusion, skilfully parried the thrust