“Such words are impious. Am I a God that I can say to these three, ‘Thus far and no farther’? No—Betake yourself to pleasure and business like other men and forget. There is no other remedy.”
But Siddhartha flung himself on his knees before his father and grasped his robe in the agony of his pleading.
“Father, hinder me no more if you love me. If I were shut in a burning home would you bar the door? Let me solve my doubt for it consumes my very life. O let me go, let me go! For if not—what way is left? Men have slain themselves for a lesser hope than mine, that perhaps down the dark ways of death they might seek and find what they could not in this world of lies and counterfeits.”
But he appealed in vain for the ears of his father were sealed, and when after pleading even to anguish the Prince had left him grave and silent, he issued orders that the Garden House should be guarded more strictly than before—that fresh dancers, fresh music, should be ordered and new pleasures invented and that every road and way should be watched with ten-fold diligence.
And Siddhartha seeing the tears of his father with a compassion that pierced his own heart returned to the Garden House, and set himself in silence to consider, not knowing whence help would find him, but firm in his resolve.
And beneath the trees Yashodara awaited him, carrying his young son in her arms, and she knelt beside him, uncovering the face of the child, bright and beautiful as a budding rose in earliest summer. For she thought—“Let this speak for me,” and Siddhartha read the little face so like his own, in silence.
Then, stretching out his hand, he clasped the hand of his wife, and spoke thus:
“Well-beloved, if our child were in a house ruining about him, and I stood by to see him crushed and broken, what would be your thoughts of me?”
She smiled with pride and contentment.
“Why ask? That could not be. You would give your life for him and count it nothing.”