Soon he clean forgot honour and duty and kingly state. Day and night he kept Tamamo by his side. He grew rough and fierce and passionate, so that his servants feared to approach him. He grew sick, listless, and languid, he pined, and his physicians could do nothing for him.
“Alas and alack,” they cried, “what ails the Divinely Descended? Of a surety he is bewitched. Woe! woe! for he will die upon our hands.”
“Out upon them, every one,” cried the Mikado, “for a pack of tedious fools. As for me, I will do my own will and pleasure.”
He was mad for love of Tamamo.
He took her to his Summer Palace, where he prepared a great feast in her honour. To the feast were bidden all the highest of the land, princes and lords and ladies of high estate; and, willy-nilly, to the Summer Palace they all repaired, where was the Mikado, wan and wild, and mad with love, and Tamamo by his side, attired in scarlet and cloth of gold. Radiantly fair she was, and she poured the Mikado’s saké out of a golden flagon.
He looked into her eyes.
“Other women are feeble toys beside you,” he said. “There’s not a woman here that’s fit to touch the end of your sleeve. O Tamamo, how I love you....”
He spoke loudly so that all could hear him, and laughed bitterly when he had spoken.
“My lord ... my lord ...” said Tamamo.
Now as the high company sat and feasted, the sky became overcast with black clouds, and the moon and the stars were hid. Suddenly a fearful wind tore through the Summer Palace and put out every torch in the great Hall of Feasting. And the rain came down in torrents. In the pitchy darkness fear and horror fell upon the assembly. The courtiers ran to and fro in a panic, the air was full of cries, the tables were overturned. The dishes and drinking-vessels crashed together, the saké spilled and soaked into the white mats. Then a radiance was made visible. It came from the place where Tamamo was, and it streamed in long flames of fire from her body.