“What, do you mean to say that they are holding a family council to-night to disinherit me?  What a good joke!  I’m sure I don’t want to be always seeing my father’s and mother’s blubbering faces; it makes me quite sick to think of them:  it’s quite unbearable.  I’m able to take care of myself; and, if I choose to go over to China, or to live in India, I should like to know who is to prevent me?  This is the very thing above all others for me.  I’ll go off to the room where they are all assembled, and ask them why they want to disinherit me.  I’ll just swagger like Danjuro [91] the actor, and frighten them into giving me fifty or seventy ounces of silver to get rid of me, and put the money in my purse, and be off to Kioto or Osaka, where I’ll set up a tea-house on my own account; and enjoy myself to my heart’s content!  I hope this will be a great night for me, so I’ll just drink a cup of wine for luck beforehand.”

[Footnote 91:  A famous actor of Yedo, who lived 195 years ago.  He was born at Sakura, in Shimosa.]

And so, with a lot of young devils of his own sort, be fell to drinking wine in teacups,[92] so that before nightfall they were all as drunk as mud.  Well, then, on the strength of this wine, as he was setting out for his father’s house, he said, “Now, then, to try my luck,” and stuck a long dirk in his girdle.  He reached his own village just before nightfall, thinking to burst into the place where he imagined his relations to be gathered together, turning their wisdom-pockets inside out, to shake out their small provision of intelligence in consultation; and he fancied that, if he blustered and bullied, he would certainly get a hundred ounces of silver out of them.  Just as he was about to enter the house, he reflected—­

[Footnote 92:  The ordinary wine-cup holding only a thimbleful, to drink wine out of teacups is a great piece of debauchery—­like drinking brandy in tumblers.]

“If I show my face in the room where my relations are gathered together, they will all look down on the ground and remain silent; so if I go in shouting and raging, it will be quite out of harmony; but if they abuse me, then I shall be in the right if I jump in on them and frighten them well.  The best plan will be for me to step out of the bamboo grove which is behind the house, and to creep round the verandah, and I can listen to these fellows holding their consultation:  they will certainly be raking up all sorts of scandal about me.  It will be all in harmony, then, if I kick down the shutters and sliding-doors with a noise like thunder.  And what fun it will be!”

As he thought thus to himself, he pulled off his iron-heeled sandals, and stuck them in his girdle, and, girding up his dress round his waist, left the bamboo grove at the back of the house, and, jumping over the garden wicket, went round the verandah and looked in.  Peeping through a chink in the shutters, he could see his relations gathered together in council, speaking in whispers.  The family were sitting in a circle, and one and all were affixing their seals to the petition of disinheritance.  At last, having passed from hand to hand, the document came round to where the two parents were sitting.  Their son, seeing this, said—­