“And let the city be neither decorated nor feasting. I desire to see the life of the people as they live it, not as they would pretend it is lived to please us great ones.” And this too was conceded, but the Maharaja commanded that the chief minister and a guard of the Sakya lords should accompany the Prince. Therefore once more the chariot and well-paced horses were prepared, adorned with precious stones and gold glittering like splendid sunshine, and he passed through the city and out by the further gate into a new world hitherto unknown. And as he went on the road was smooth and white, and gardens gay on either side and trees loaded, some with flowers and some with fruit, and seeing this and knowing it unprepared for his eyes, his heart stirred under the snow of grief and thawed a little from its ice, for it seemed that the people who lived therein must know some happiness and freedom from misery. But as he went further the heat of the day strengthened and became like a weight of lead, oppressive even beneath the silken canopy of the chariot and the sweat stood on his brow and his garments clung to the moisture of his skin and weariness weighed upon him. But for all this the toil about him could not cease, for men must eat, and work be completed and the fields of the Maharaja ploughed, and he saw how the labourers struggled with painful exertion, their bodies bent, their wet hair falling about haggard faces, their bodies fouled with mud and dust. And some were old and some were weak, and yet all must greatly toil and very pitiful was it to see their strained muscles and starting eyes. The ploughing oxen also—they, toiling so pitifully and with no reward,—their lolling tongues and gaping jaws, the whip and goad indenting smooth flanks until bright blood drops started and they trembled and shrank—all these things tortured the mind of Siddhartha as he sat silently observant. And he said within himself: “The world is built on pain and its foundations laid in agony. O Gods, most cruel and unjust, if there be a way, where is it? If there be a Law of Peace, where shall I find it? For I am bound in the dungeons of despair.” And, nobly moved to sympathy, he dismounted from the chariot, forcing himself to look steadfastly upon the sufferings of man and beast, and he sat down beneath a jambu tree, reflecting on the ways of death and birth. And he desired his companions, the Sakya lords, to leave him and wander where they would, and they went away laughing with each other and talking, costly umbrellas borne over them in the heat until they should reach the shade of the forest and there rest beside their wines and fruits. And then, as was now his wont, he gave himself to deep meditation on life and death, on transiency, and the progress of all to decay, desiring with all his soul that somewhere, anywhere, he might behold the changeless, the Abiding and in that find rest. And he asked of his soul: