There was a tendency to irreverence in this tone, which required nipping in the bud. The eye of the Mikado's master shot forth a gleam, before which even the lioness cowered. When his mind was made up, the Hojo brooked no argument. "Be it as you will!" Tomoyé dutifully murmured. "My lord is all-wise, all-powerful; his wife his willing slave. Go forth and seek the paragons, and let us hope you will find them soon." To please him whom she loved best on earth, Tomoyé made believe to be convinced; and yet her woman's tact whispered down in the deep recesses of her manly bosom, that my lord, for all his wiliness, was wrong; that he was building a fool's paradise far up in [OE]ther, out of which her dear boy might tumble. Curious to relate, the paragons concerning whom she was tempted to be disrespectful were not far to seek. With but little hocus-pocus father and daughter were conjured on the scene, as absolutely the "very thing," to all appearance, as the cunning Hojo had conceived them. He declared as much at least, and dutiful Tomoyé acquiesced, slightly pinching her lips in silent protest. Instead of the "very thing" which was to bring about complete success before its time in our weary pilgrimage of cycles, the mother's instinct beheld with prophetic vision, in the proposed alliance, the worst elements of discord and defeat,--of so dire and dread a tragedy as should shake Japan to its centre, and annihilate the dominating house. Yet who was she, the warrior wife reflected in her humility, to set up puny instincts against the ripened statecraft of my lord? Her muscles were better than her brains. Should she presume to know more than he who held in his hand Mikado, nobles, people?--whose nod was law in the land beloved of Buddha? who had preserved it from contamination from without? Her place was to bend before the will of the dictator, and offer prayers for her husband and her son. * * * * * The most perfectly poetic spot in all poetic Japan, whose ensanguined history is made beauteous to the eye of a fastidious posterity by the flora of chivalry and valour, is Nara. Lovely and secluded, sweet-smelling and umbrageous Nara! The Nara of to-day--how much more the Nara of five hundred years ago--suggests to the incursive foreigner a bit of Eden's garden.