When he was nineteen he married his cousin, a girl singularly beautiful and good. For the next ten years after that we know nothing at all about him, but we are sure that he lived a quiet, peaceful life, treating all around him with gentleness and courtesy, and thinking little about sickness or sorrow. One day, when he was about twenty-nine years old, he was driving to the pleasure-grounds when he saw a man broken down by age--weak, poor, and miserable--and he asked the man who was driving his chariot to explain the sight. To which the charioteer replied that all men who live to a great age become weak in mind and body, just like the poor old wreck they had seen in the street. Another day he saw a man suffering from disease, and again the charioteer explained that all men have to suffer pain. A few days later he saw a dead body, and learned for the first time--a fact that had been kept from him through all the days of his childhood and his manhood even up to that hour--that all human beings must die. Gautama was very sad when he thought of the misery that there is in the world, and he began to wonder if it could not all be done away with. He made up his mind to go away secretly and become a hermit. He would live away from towns and crowds, and see if he could not discover a way to lessen the sorrows of his fellow-men. Just about this time his son was born. He loved this son very dearly, but he thought that if he were to find the path to happiness, he would have to free himself from all earthly ties and relations. One night he went into the room where his wife lay sleeping. There, in the dim yellow light of the lamp, he saw the mother and the child. The mother's hand rested caressingly on the head of the little baby; flowers were strewn upon the floor and around the bed. He wanted to take the tiny mite in his arms and kiss it ere he went away; but he was afraid of waking either of the slumberers, so he took one last, long, loving look at them both, and then fled into the night, accompanied only by Channa, his charioteer. Under the full light of the July moon he sped away, having given up his home, his wealth, and his dear ones to become an outcast and a wanderer. Then there appeared to him Mara, the evil one, who tempted him to give up his plans for a lonely life. Mara promised him, if he would return to wealth and worldly ease, to make him in seven days the sole ruler of the world. But Gautama was not to be persuaded, and the evil one was defeated. The prince and the charioteer rode on for many miles until they came to the banks of a certain river. There Gautama stopped. Taking his sword, he cut off his long flowing locks and gave them to Channa, telling him to take them, his horse, and his ornaments back to the town of his birth, in order that his friends and his relatives might know exactly what had happened to him. Channa was loath to leave his master, but was obliged to obey him.