And they saluted him, and returned slowly through the forest, pausing here and there as they went to speak with the calm and untroubled inhabitants who therein sought the treasure of wisdom, eager to understand from them if possible the teaching which as the nectar of flowers draws the bee, had drawn the Prince to the homeless life. Hard was it to comprehend, and at last, sad and bewildered, they emerged from the green ocean of leaves to the light of common day and mounting the chariot, plied lash and shout hastening homeward, and thus was the last tie with Kapila broken. And the Prince remained behind them, upborne by the love of those he had forsaken, a love too great for them and such as they to comprehend. CHAPTER X THUS have I heard. Then for patient years. Siddhartha, the Buddha to be,—struggled to the light in the forest, finding none. Surely was this the dark night of the soul wherein not so much as a star gleams in the thick and stifling midnight. With Alara he studied long and patiently, so mastering his system of thought that the ascetics who followed Alara besought the Prince to become their master. But this he would not, for he discerned no finality in this teaching, nor any real deliverance, because desire is not extinguished even though it be for high things, and though it be held but by a finger the ego of man is drawn again and yet again into the revolving wheel that mangles him,—the wheel of birth and death. Therefore abandoning the teacher Alara he went sorrowfully on to the teacher Uddaka, that wise dweller in solitude, and with him he studied in patience, hoping yet against hope that here at last might be the beginning of light. And he mastered this system also, confronting his instructor with difficulties which could be neither explained nor overcome,—finding that Uddaka promised a glittering heaven not founded upon the Unchangeable, but transitory, vanishing, illusory. And here too the Way was not, nor the unchanging Law. Then at last on his long patience dawned a certainty—that no help was in any son of man, that the riddle was too high for them and their wings fluttered lamed in the blue and awful heights where his own thoughts soared—and that even this height was not high enough. And within himself he said:— “What I have learned here I have learned and there is no more. The pasture is eaten bare. I will go on alone into the forests of Uruvela and there I will practise a terrible asceticism beyond all I have seen in Rajagriha, for it may be these men are right who teach that in the destruction of the body lies enfranchisement of the soul. I cannot tell, but I will pass by no opening which may set my feet in the Way.” So travelling alone (for he said in his heart: