III
Long ago, at a place called Matsuyama, in the province of Echigo, there lived a young samurai husband and wife whose names have been quite forgotten. They had a little daughter.
Once the husband went to Yedo,—probably as a retainer in the train of the Lord of Echigo. On his return he brought presents from the capital,—sweet cakes and a doll for the little girl (at least so the artist tells us), and for his wife a mirror of silvered bronze. To the young mother that mirror seemed a very wonderful thing; for it was the first mirror ever brought to Matsuyama. She did not understand the use of it, and innocently asked whose was the pretty smiling face she saw inside it. When her husband answered her, laughing, "Why, it is your own face! How foolish you are!" she was ashamed to ask any more questions, but hastened to put her present away, still thinking it to be a very mysterious thing. And she kept it hidden many years,—the original story does not say why. Perhaps for the simple reason that in all countries love makes even the most trifling gift too sacred to be shown.
But in the time of her last sickness she gave the mirror to her daughter, saying, "After I am dead you must look into this mirror every morning and evening, and you will see me. Do not grieve." Then she died.
And the girl thereafter looked into the mirror every morning and evening, and did not know that the face in the mirror was her own shadow,—but thought it to be that of her dead mother, whom she much resembled. So she would talk to the shadow, having the sensation, or, as the Japanese original more tenderly says, "having the heart of meeting her mother" day by day; and she prized the mirror above all things.
At last her father noticed this conduct, and thought it strange, and asked her the reason of it, whereupon she told him all. "Then," says the old Japanese narrator, "he thinking it to be a very piteous thing, his eyes grew dark with tears."
IV
Such is the old story.... But was the artless error indeed so piteous a thing as it seemed to the parent? Or was his emotion vain as my own regret for the destiny of all those mirrors with all their recollections?