FLUTTER

Her Majesty smiled, recognizing the reply to her poem about autumn leaves. “My lady,” the gentlewomen of the day before insisted, still intoxicated by the flowers, “you could have found no fault there with the beauty of spring!” «The Birds» resounded bravely amid warblers’ sweet carolings, while here and there upon the lake waterbirds sang their own songs, and the effect of the rapid conclusion was endlessly delightful. How lightly, then, the butterflies flitted about, to flutter into the hedge at last among cascading kerria roses!

Her Majesty’s Household Deputy and the other privy gentlemen so entitled passed their rewards on one to the other and gave the page girls theirs. The birds got cherry blossom long dresses and the butterflies ones in kerria rose. It was just as though these had been prepared beforehand. The musicians, according to rank, got a white layering or a roll of silk. The Captain had laid across his shoulders a wisteria long dress as well as a full set of women’s robes.

This was Her Majesty’s reply: “Yesterday, you know, I could have cried aloud. Come, they seemed to say, and your butterflies might well have lured me away, if between us did not grow bank on bank of kerria rose.”

(The Tale of Genji, chap. 24, p. 445)