Diaries of Court Ladies
writings, burying some, and making dolls' houses of the rest. Since that time I have received no letters and am determined to write no more on fresh paper, so thrifty have I become! I think I am not in the wrong. After reading, please return quickly. As I could not revise all there may be some defects; read—overlooking them.
My mind has been wholly occupied with the things and persons of our world, and as I close this writing I reflect on how deeply rooted was my interest in them, but it was only accident that closed my descriptions of others.
[Here an interval during which she returns to Court.]
On the eleventh of the First month, 1009, in the early morning they went to the temple. The Lord Prime Minister's wife accompanied the Queen, others went by boat. I was belated and went at night. There was preaching. People made confession according to the custom of the mountain temple.[1] Many pictures of pagodas were painted, and they amused themselves. Most of the nobles had retired, and there were few persons left when the midnight preaching began. The preachers and interpreters of the sutras were twenty in number. . . . [Here is a sentence whose meaning is lost.] They all preached in different ways about the merit of the Queen's presence; there were many things laughed at. After the preaching the courtiers went boating; they all rowed and en-
- ↑ The great Enryakuji on Mount Hiyé, northeast of Kioto.
