e efforts of
the king his father, despite the guards and his young men companions,
despite the beauty of the dancing-girls, the mysteries of life came home
to him, and he was afraid. It is a beautiful story told in quaint
imagery how it was that the knowledge of sickness and of death came to
him, a horror stalking amid the glories of his garden. He learnt, and he
understood, that he too would grow old, would fall sick, would die. And
beyond death? There was the fear, and no one could allay it. Daily he
grew more and more discontented with his life in the palace, more and
more averse to the pleasures that were around him. Deeper and deeper he
saw through the laughing surface to the depths that lay beneath.
Silently all these thoughts ripened in his mind, till at last the change
came. We are told that the end came suddenly, the resolve was taken in a
moment. The lake fills and fills until at length it overflows, and in a
night the dam is broken, and the pent-up waters are leaping far towards
the sea.

As the prince returned from his last drive in his garden with resolve
firmly established in his heart, there came to him the news that his
wife had borne to him a son. Wife and child, his cup of desire was now
full. But his resolve was unshaken. 'See, here is another tie, alas! a
new and stronger tie that I must break,' he said; but he never wavered.

That night the prince left the palace. Silently in the dead of night he
left all the luxury about him, and went out secretly with only his
faithful servant, Maung San, to saddle for him his horse and lead him
forth. Only before he left he looked in cautiously to see Yathodaya, the
young wife and mother. She was lying asleep, with one hand upon the face
of her firstborn, and the prince was afraid to go further. 'To see him,'
he said, 'I must remove the hand of his mother, and she may awake; and
if she awake, how shall I depart? I will go, then, without seeing my
son. Later on, when all these passions are faded from my heart, when I
am sure of myself, perhaps then I shall be able to see him. But now I
must go.'

So he went forth very silently and very sadly, and leapt upon his
horse--the great white horse that would not neigh for fear of waking the
sleeping guards--and the prince and his faithful noble Maung San went
out into the night. He was only twenty-eight when he fled from all his
world, and what he sought was this: 'Deliverance for men from the misery
of life, and the k