While Narihiro was smoking as usual in a room in the palace, one of the golden doors with a picture of Seiōbo painted on it slid quietly open and an attendant clad in a darkish kimono of kihachijō silk and a crested black haori crawled reverentially into his presence. As he did not raise his face, it was not yet evident who he was. Narihiro, as he thought the man had come on some business, rapped his pipe and said generously,
“What is it?”
“Er—Sōshun has a request to make.”
So saying, Kōchiyama paused for a moment. Then, as he went on, he slowly raised his head and finally fixed his eyes on Narihiro’s face. He fixed them there like a snake charming its victim, overflowing the while with that peculiar amiability possessed only by men of his sort.
“It’s only this, that I should like very much to have you give me that pipe there in your hand.”
Narihiro unconsciously dropped his eyes to the pipe in his hand. At practically the same moment, Kōchiyama went on as if following him up,
“What do you say? Will you give it to me?”
Sōshun’s words had in them something that was not simply a feeling of supplication but also that sense of overbearing peculiar to the attendant class in their relations with all daimyō. In the palace, where complicated ceremony was held in high esteem, every lord of the land had to follow the guidance of the attendants. On the one hand, Narihiro was at this