She just now sends a message, inquiring about your welfare.
By whom?
Kyogoku.
She loves me still, and I would kill myself? No, no; I must see her. Esyo; can you arrange it; I would first meet Yodogima?
Promise me this: you will keep the engagement.
I swear it.
Then lend me your sword; I shall have had need for it before I am returned.
Over at Ozaka, men bound and eager, to follow up a significant rout, were massing and ordering and devising the last and only onslaught that had been necessary to end a feudalism, throttle an aristocracy, and implant for good the democracy that Hideyoshi had all but consolidated.
Yodogima looked out and over the dazzling troopers, as they marched and countermarched to orders flowing from lips she adored as only a mother can. Hideyori, her son, had come into his own; should follow up that defeated army, and make doubly sure glories which were of right only his; would send his name down to all posterity, as the builder of a commonwealth founded upon an equality of opportunity and with favoritism to none. Men and women should thenceforth develop the ideal that God infixes, share the real in due proportion, and worship according to the dictates each of his own untrammelled conscience.
God bless you, my son; and may He give you strength to win, said she, with no other thought encouraging, as their preparations progressed apace.