As he peered into its transparent depths, with his vision focused upon
the spot of light where the rays of the setting sun touched it into
flame, he was but little surprised to discover that he could make out
tiny figures in the crystal. For the moment this strange thing seemed
to him perfectly natural. And the movements of these little men and
women interested him so much that he watched them as they went to and
fro, sweeping a roadway with large brooms. Thus it happened that the
fixity of his gaze was intensified. And so it was that in a few minutes
he saw with no astonishment that he was one of the group himself, he
himself in the rich and stately attire of a samurai. From the instant
that Cosmo Waynflete discovered himself among the people whom he saw
moving before him, as his eyes were fastened on the illuminated dot in
the transparent ball, he ceased to see them as little figures, and he
accepted them as of the full stature of man. This increase in their
size was no more a source of wonderment to him than it had been to
discern himself in the midst of them. He accepted both of these
marvellous things without question--indeed, with no thought at all that
they were in any way peculiar or abnormal. Not only this, but
thereafter he seemed to have transferred his personality to the Cosmo
Waynflete who was a Japanese samurai and to have abandoned entirely the
Cosmo Waynflete who was an American traveller, and who had just
returned to New York that Christmas morning. So completely did the
Japanese identity dominate that the existence of the American identity
was wholly unknown to him. It was as though the American had gone to
sleep in New York at the end of the nineteenth century, and had waked a
Japanese in Nippon in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
With his sword by his side--a Murimasa blade, likely to bring bad luck
to the wearer sooner or later--he had walked from his own house in the
quarter of Kioto which is called Yamashina to the quarter which is
called Yoshiwara, a place of ill repute, where dwell women of evil
life, and where roysterers and drunkards come by night. He knew that
the sacred duty of avenging his master's death had led him to cast off
his faithful wife so that he might pretend to riot in debauchery at the
Three Sea-Shores. The fame of his shameful doings had spread abroad,
and it must soon come to the ears of the man whom he wished to take
unawares. Now he was lying prone in the street, seemingly sunk in a
drunken slumber, so that men might see him and carry the news to the
treacherous assassin of his beloved master. As he lay there that
afternoon, he revolved in his mind the devices he should use to make
away with his enemy when the hour might be ripe at last for the
accomplishment of his holy revenge. To himself he called the roll of
his fellow-ronins, now biding their time, as he was, and ready always
to obey his orders and to follow his lead to the death, when at last
the sun should rise on the day of vengeance.
So he gave no heed to the scoffs and the jeers of those who passed
along the street, laughing him to scorn as they beheld him lying there
in a stupor from excessive drink at that inordinate hour of the day.
And among those who came by at last was a man from Satsuma, who was
moved to voice the reproaches of all that saw this sorry sight.
"Is not this Oishi Kuranosuke," said the man from Satsuma, "who was a
councillor of Asano Takumi no Kami, and who, not having the heart to
avenge his lord, gives himself up to women and wine? See how he lies
drunk in the public street! Faithless beast! Fool and craven! Unworthy
of the name of a samurai!"
And with that the man from Satsuma trod on him as he lay there, and
spat upon him, and went away indignantly. The spies of Kotsuke no Suke
heard what the man from Satsuma had said, and they saw how he had
spurned the prostrate samurai with his foot; and they went their way to
report to their master that he need no longer have any fear of the
councillors of Asano Takumi no Kami. All this the man, lying prone in
the dust of the street, noted; and it made his heart glad, for then he
made sure that the day was soon coming when he could do his duty at
last and take vengeance for the death of his master.