set in. During this tedious period of inactivity he thought much of his friends at the Capital. Often he called to mind the picture of Murasaki’s misery in those last hours, of the Heir Apparent’s infant beauty or the heedless antics of Aoi’s little son. He determined to send a courier to the City, and began writing letters to everybody. While he wrote to the Lady of his palace and again while he wrote to Fujitsubo in her cloister he wept so bitterly that the letters had many times to be put aside. To Oborozuki he dared not write direct, but as he had sometimes done before enclosed a message to her in a letter to Lady Chūnagon, with the acrostic poem: ‘That I, though cast like weed upon the barren margin of the sea, am unrepentant still, how should they guess,—these fisherfolk that tend their salt-kilns on the shore?’ To the retired Minister and to Nurse Saishō he sent many instructions concerning the upbringing of the child. It may well be imagined that the arrival of his post-bag in the City set many hearts a-flutter.
The condition of Murasaki after his departure had gravely alarmed her attendants. She lay for many days utterly overcome by the shock of his departure. Every effort to cheer her was in vain. The sight or mention of things which she connected with him, a zithern which he had once played, the perfume of a dress which he had left behind, threw her at once into a new paroxysm of grief. She behaved indeed for all the world as though he were not merely exiled but already in his grave. At last Shōnagon, becoming seriously alarmed, sent for her uncle the priest and begged his aid. The liturgy of intercession which he conducted had for its aim both the recovery of Lady Murasaki from her present prostration and the early recall of Genji himself. For a while she was somewhat calmer and began to go about the house again. She spent much
