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When he saw this, the Rônin feigned the utmost grief and dismay, and said to his fellow-passengers, "This priest, whom we have just lost, was my cousin: he was going to Kiyôto, to visit the shrine of his patron; and as I happened to have business there as well, we settled to travel together. Now, alas! by this misfortune, my cousin is dead, and I am left alone."
Then the ronin said to the boatmen: "We ought, by rights, to report this matter to the authorities; but as I am pressed for time, and the business might bring trouble on yourselves as well, perhaps we had better hush it up for the present; I will at once go on to Kiyoto and tell my cousin's patron, besides writing home about it.
The origin of the temple was as follows: In the days of the Emperor Suiko, who reigned in the thirteenth century A.D., a certain noble, named Hashi no Nakatomo, fell into disgrace and left the Court; and having become a Rônin, or masterless man, he took up his abode on the Golden Dragon Hill, with two retainers, being brothers, named Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takénari.
Here there is an arm of the sea, which is crossed in ferry-boats, that start as soon as some twenty or thirty passengers are gathered together; and in one of these boats the two travellers embarked. About half-way across, the priest was taken with a sudden necessity to go to the side of the boat; and the Rônin, following him, tripped him up whilst no one was looking, and flung him into the sea.
Once upon a time, a certain Rônin, Tajima Shumé by name, an able and well-read man, being on his travels to see the world, went up to Kiyôto by the Tôkaidô. One day, in the neighbourhood of Nagoya, in the province of Owari, he fell in with a wandering priest, with whom he entered into conversation.
"He who bears a jewel in his bosom bears poison." Hardly had the ronin heard these words of the priest than an evil heart arose within him, and he thought to himself, "Man's life, from the womb to the grave, is made up of good and of ill luck. Here am I, nearly forty years old, a wanderer, without a calling, or even a hope of advancement in the world.
Shosetsu committed suicide, and Chuya was crucified. In the following year another intrigue was formed under the leadership of Bekki Shoetnon, also a ronin. On this occasion the plan was to murder Ii Naotaka, the first minister of State, as well as his colleagues, and then to set fire to the temple Zojo-ji on the occasion of a religious ceremony.
I learn from them also what I was ignorant of that Nicholas Ronin, Chan- cellor of Burgundy and founder of the establishment at Beaune, was the original of the worthy kneeling before the Virgin, in the magnificent John van Eyck of the Salon Carre. All I could see was the court of the hospital and two or three rooms.
What think you, gentlemen?" added he, turning to the other travellers. They, of course, were only too glad to avoid any hindrance to their onward journey, and all with one voice agreed to what the ronin had proposed; and so the matter was settled.
All this must have happened not less than three hundred years ago. On their way to Kyoto they met another ronin, whose real name I have not been able to learn. For a moment only this 'wave-man' figures in the story, and immediately vanishes into the eternal Night of death and all forgotten things.
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