Alas! there are no other kakemonos. There were several others: they have
been lost!

No: I am happily mistaken; the priest has found, in some mysterious
recess, one more kakemono, a very large one, which he unrolls and
suspends beside the others. A vision of beauty, indeed! but what has
this to do with faith or ghosts? In the foreground a garden by the
waters of the sea, of some vast blue lake,--a garden like that at
Kanagawa, full of exquisite miniature landscape-work: cascades,
grottoes, lily-ponds, carved bridges, and trees snowy with blossom, and
dainty pavilions out-jutting over the placid azure water. Long, bright,
soft bands of clouds swim athwart the background. Beyond and above them
rises a fairy magnificence of palatial structures, roof above roof,
through an aureate haze like summer vapour: creations aerial, blue,
light as dreams. And there are guests in these gardens, lovely beings,
Japanese maidens. But they wear aureoles, star-shining: they are
spirits!

For this is Paradise, the Gokuraku; and all those divine shapes are
Bosatsu. And now, looking closer, I perceive beautiful weird things
which at first escaped my notice.

They are gardening, these charming beings!--they are caressing the
lotus-buds, sprinkling their petals with something celestial, helping
them to blossom. And what lotus-buds with colours not of this world.
Some have burst open; and in their luminous hearts, in a radiance like
that of dawn, tiny naked infants are seated, each with a tiny halo.
These are Souls, new Buddhas, hotoke born into bliss. Some are very,
very small; others larger; all seem to be growing visibly, for their