"Your Highness always was a liberal patron of the arts," said the treasurer.
"And though generous, most discriminating, for really the picture is overpaid," said the courtiers.
THE ARTIST PLUNGED HEAD FOREMOST INTO HIS WORK.
The painter smiled, slowly walked to where the screen was hung, and plunged head foremost into his work. Then, to the great amazement of the Shogun and his court, a splash was heard. Now the water rippled and the boat began to rock. The rushes on the bank of the stream nodded and bent and swayed, as if with a passing breeze. The birds flew from bough to bough. The rabbit scampered away. There was a figure in the boat, and presently the anchor was hauled up and the sail was set, and the little craft, heeling over with the wind, sped up the stream, and now a landing was made at the foot of the mountain.
Next a little man was seen slowly climbing up the mountain, and when the mountain-top was reached the figure bowed respectfully to the Shogun and the court and disappeared, as if descending on the other side of the mountain.
Then a loon came to the immediate foreground of the screen, and flapped his wings, and said, in very courtly Japanese, these words, which may be rather carelessly translated into English in this way:
"You are all a set of ninnies, for you don't know a good thing when you see it. Ta, ta!"
The courtiers were so enraged that they drew their two swords and wanted to hack the loon and the screen to pieces. But when they looked at the screen, they saw a big tear in it, with falling flaps of silk, on which the work had been painted. It was where the artist had made his exit. This is the Japanese fable for critics.