Page:The Tale of Genji.pdf/227

Rh save that the workmanship of it is rather unusual,’ and despite Genji’s protests he insisted upon buckling it round him. The performance of such services was his principal interest in life. What did it matter if Genji was rather irregular in his visits? To have so agreeable a young man going in and out of one’s house at all was the greatest pleasure he could imagine.

Genji did not pay many New Year’s visits. First he went to the Emperor, then the Heir Apparent and the Ex-Emperor, and after that to Princess Fujitsubo’s house in the Third Ward. As they saw him enter the servants of the house noticed how much he had grown and altered in the last year. ‘Look how he has filled out,’ they said, ‘even since his last visit!’ Of the Princess herself he was only allowed a distant glimpse. It gave him many forebodings. Her child had been expected in the twelfth month and her condition was now causing some anxiety. That it would at any rate be born some time during the first weeks of the New Year was confidently assumed by her own people and had been stated at Court. But the first month went by and still nothing happened. It began to be rumoured that she was suffering from some kind of possession or delusion. She herself grew very depressed; she felt certain that when the event at last happened she would not survive it and she worried so much about herself that she became seriously ill. The delay made Genji more certain than ever of his own responsibility and he arranged secretly for prayers on her behalf to be said in all the great temples. He had already become firmly convinced that whatever might happen concerning the child Fujitsubo was herself utterly doomed when he heard that about the tenth day of the second month she had successfully given birth to a boy. The news brought great satisfaction both to the Emperor and the whole court.