CHAPTER VI THE SAFFRON-FLOWER

desolate palace. For a long while he had no desire to probe the secret of her bashfulness, to drive her into the light of day. But at last the idea occurred to him that he had perhaps all the while been mistaken. It was only a vague impression gathered in a room so dark that one could hardly see one’s hand in front of one’s face. If only he could persuade her to let him see her properly? But she seemed frightened to submit herself to the ordeal of daylight. Accordingly one night when he knew that he should catch her household quite at its ease he crept in unobserved and peeped through a gap in the door of the women’s apartments. The princess herself was not visible. There was a very dilapidated screen-of-honour at the end of the room, but it looked as if it had not been moved from where it stood for years and years. Four or five elderly gentlewomen were in the room. They were preparing their mistress’s supper in Chinese vessels which looked like the famous ‘royal blue’ ware,⁸⁶ but they were much damaged and the food which had been provided seemed quite unworthy of these precious dishes. The old ladies soon retired, presumably to have their own supper. In a closet opening out of the main road he could see a very chilly-looking lady in an incredibly smoke-stained white dress and dirty apron tied at the waist. Despite this shabbiness, her hair was done over a comb in the manner of Court servants in ancient days when they waited at their master’s table, though it hung down untidily. He had sometimes seen figures such as this haunting the housekeeper’s rooms in the Palace, but he had no idea that they could still actually be seen waiting upon a living person! ‘O dear, O dear,’ cried the lady in the apron, ‘what a cold winter we are having! It was not worth living so long only to meet times like these,’ and she shed a tear. ‘If only things had but gone on as they were in the old Prince’s time!’ she moaned. ‘What a change! No discipline, no authority. To think that I should have lived to see such days!’ and she quivered with horror like one who ‘were he a bird would take wing and fly away.’⁸⁷ She went on to pour out such a pitiful tale of things gone awry that Genji could bear it no longer, and pretending that he had just arrived tapped at