him at the same time to find out whatever he could from Shōnagon, the child’s nurse. ‘What an impressionable character he is,’ thought Koremitsu. He had only had a glimpse of the child; but that had sufficed to convince him that she was a mere baby, though he remembered thinking her quite pretty. What trick would his master’s heart be playing upon him next?
The old priest was deeply impressed by the arrival of a letter in the hands of so special and confidential a messenger. After delivering it, Koremitsu sought out the nurse. He repeated all that Genji had told him to say and added a great deal of general information about his master. Being a man of many words he talked on and on, continually introducing some new topic which had suddenly occurred to him as relevant. But at the end of it all Shōnagon was just as puzzled as everyone else had been to account for Genji’s interest in a child so ridiculously young. His letter was very deferential. In it he said that he longed to see a specimen of her childish writing done letter by letter, as the nun had described. As before, he enclosed a poem: ‘Was it the shadows in the mountain well that told you my purpose was but jest?’[1] To which she answered ‘Some perhaps that have drawn in that well now bitterly repent. Can the shadows tell me if again it will be so?’ and Koremitsu brought a spoken message to the same effect, together with the assurance that so soon as the nun’s health improved, she intended to visit the Capital and would then communicate with him again. The prospect of her visit was very exciting.
About this time Lady Fujitsubo fell ill and retired for a while from the Palace. The sight of the Emperor’s grief and anxiety moved Genji’s pity. But he could not help thinking that this was an opportunity which must not be
- ↑ There is here a pun, and a reference to poem 3807 in the Manyōshū.
