on unto his father, "know well, Sir,
that thus I live not in joy and pleasaunce, but rather in affliction
and great straits, so that my very meat and drink seem distasteful unto
me and bitter. I yearn to see all that lieth without these gates. If
then thou wouldest not have me live in anguish of mind, bid me go
abroad as I desire, and let me rejoice my soul with sights hitherto
unseen by mine eyes."

Grieved was the king to hear these words, but, perceiving that to deny
this request would but increase his boy's pain and grief, he answered,
"My son, I will grant thee thy heart's desire." And immediately he
ordered that choice steeds, and an escort fit for a king, be made
ready, and gave him license to go abroad whensoever he would, charging
his companions to suffer nothing unpleasant to come in his way, but to
show him all that was beautiful and gladsome. He bade them muster in
the way troops of folk intuning melodies in every mode, and presenting
divers mimic shows, that these might occupy and delight his mind.

So thus it came to pass that the king's son often went abroad. One day,
through the negligence of his attendants, he descried two men, the one
maimed, and the other blind. In abhorrence of the sight, he cried to
his esquires, "Who are these, and what is this distressing spectacle?"
They, unable to conceal what he had with his own eyes seen, answered,
"These be human sufferings, which spring from corrupt matter, and from
a body full of evil humours." The young prince asked, "Are these the
fortune of all men?" They answered, "Not of all, but of those in whom
the principle of health is turned away by the badness of the humours."
Again the youth asked, "If then this is wont to happen not to all, but
only to some, can they be known on whom this terrible calamity shall
fall? or is it undefined and unforeseeable?" "What man," said they,
"can discern the future, and accurately ascertain it? This is beyond
human nature, and is reserved for the immortal gods alone." The young
prince ceased from his questioning, but his heart was grieved at the
sight that he had witnessed, and the form of his visage was changed by
the strangeness of the matter.

Not many days after, as he was again taking his walks abroad, he
happened with an old man, well stricken in years, shrivelled in
countenance, feeble-kneed, bent double, grey-haired, toothless, and
with broken utterance. The prince was seized with astonishment, and,