Pursuing his goal, he allowed the city to suck him in, drifted through the flow of the streets, stood still on the squares, rested on the stairs of stone by the river.  When the evening came, he made friends with barber’s assistant, whom he had seen working in the shade of an arch in a building, whom he found again praying in a temple of Vishnu, whom he told about stories of Vishnu and the Lakshmi.  Among the boats by the river, he slept this night, and early in the morning, before the first customers came into his shop, he had the barber’s assistant shave his beard and cut his hair, comb his hair and anoint it with fine oil.  Then he went to take his bath in the river.

When late in the afternoon, beautiful Kamala approached her grove in her sedan-chair, Siddhartha was standing at the entrance, made a bow and received the courtesan’s greeting.  But that servant who walked at the very end of her train he motioned to him and asked him to inform his mistress that a young Brahman would wish to talk to her.  After a while, the servant returned, asked him, who had been waiting, to follow him conducted him, who was following him, without a word into a pavilion, where Kamala was lying on a couch, and left him alone with her.

“Weren’t you already standing out there yesterday, greeting me?” asked Kamala.

“It’s true that I’ve already seen and greeted you yesterday.”

“But didn’t you yesterday wear a beard, and long hair, and dust in your hair?”

“You have observed well, you have seen everything.  You have seen Siddhartha, the son of a Brahman, who has left his home to become a Samana, and who has been a Samana for three years.  But now, I have left that path and came into this city, and the first one I met, even before I had entered the city, was you.  To say this, I have come to you, oh Kamala!  You are the first woman whom Siddhartha is not addressing with his eyes turned to the ground.  Never again I want to turn my eyes to the ground, when I’m coming across a beautiful woman.”

Kamala smiled and played with her fan of peacocks’ feathers.  And asked:  “And only to tell me this, Siddhartha has come to me?”

“To tell you this and to thank you for being so beautiful.  And if it doesn’t displease you, Kamala, I would like to ask you to be my friend and teacher, for I know nothing yet of that art which you have mastered in the highest degree.”

At this, Kamala laughed aloud.

“Never before this has happened to me, my friend, that a Samana from the forest came to me and wanted to learn from me!  Never before this has happened to me, that a Samana came to me with long hair and an old, torn loin-cloth!  Many young men come to me, and there are also sons of Brahmans among them, but they come in beautiful clothes, they come in fine shoes, they have perfume in their hair and money in their pouches.  This is, oh Samana, how the young men are like who come to me.”