conversation would have bored him and indeed he scarcely seemed to notice their existence. Those few favoured persons with whom he was generally known to have been on terms of intimacy were in every case women of entirely exceptional qualities. That one who in general showed such discrimination should single out as the recipient of his attentions a creature who could not lay claim to a single merit either of person or intellect, caused universal astonishment. This much at any rate was agreed, that though no one had heard anything about it, the affair must in reality be of very long standing.
The retainers and dependants who, thinking that the Hitachi Palace would never see better days, had a short while ago been in such a hurry to seek other employment, now one after another came begging to re-enter the princess’s service. She at any rate knew how to behave towards those who waited upon her—treated them even with perhaps an exaggerated consideration. Whereas in the houses to which they had betaken themselves, belonging for the most part to wholly uncultured and undistinguished members of the petty bureaucracy, their experiences had been such as they would never have imagined to be possible; and they made no secret of the fact that they heartily repented of their recent experiment.
Prince Genji’s influence was now greater than it had ever been in the days before his disaster. The mere fact that he was known to take an interest in the Hitachi Palace was enough to invest the place with a certain glamour. Visitors began to make their appearance, and soon the once deserted hills presented quite a busy and animated scene. One thing which had made the house so depressing was the fact that it was wholly shut in by bushes and trees. This jungle Genji now ordered to be reduced to tolerable dimensions; he had the ponds cleared and
