the Chief Minister’s!’ and a shout of laughter went up at the notion that there could possibly exist anybody in the world who had not heard of this all-important event, laughter in which a number of rough scallawags who were standing by joined as heartily as the rest.
She was confounded. That after all these long months of waiting it should be thus she met him showed indeed to what a different world he really belonged! Yet after all they were not quite strangers, he and she. She was at least of more account in his eyes than these wretches who had scoffed at her ignorance, than all this rabble who cared nothing for him and had come here only that they might boast of having shared in his triumph. How cruel an irony that she who thought of him and him only, who painfully gathered together every scrap of intelligence concerning his health and movements, should all unwittingly have chosen this disastrous day for her journey, while all the rest of the world resounded with the news of his coming; she hid her face and wept. The procession moved on its way—innumerable green cloaks, with here and there a scarlet one among them, bright as an autumn maple-tree amid a grove of pines. In cavalcade after cavalcade the varying colours flashed by, now dark, now light.[1] Among the officers of the Sixth Grade there was one whose sheriff’s coat of gold and green made him conspicuous; this was Ukon, the gentleman who upon the occasion of Genji’s visit to the Imperial Tombs had recited the verse: ‘Little, alas, they heed their worshippers….’[2] He had become captain of the Quiver Bearers, and as such was attended by more numerous officers than any other of the sheriffs. Among these attendants was Yoshikiyo, who in a
