A CHINESE STUDIO 243
fancy to him and treated him well, which kindness Tseng repaid by an irreproachable fidelity. It happened, how- ever, that on one occasion when they were chatting together, burglars broke into the house and killed the gentleman, Tseng having escaped by hiding himself under the bed. Thereupon he was immediately charged by the wife with murder, and on being taken before the authorities was sentenced to die the "lingering death." 12 This sentence was at once carried out with tortures more horrible than any in all the Courts of Purgatory, in the middle of which Tseng heard one of his companions call out "Hello, there! you've got nightmare." Tseng got up and rubbed his eyes, and his friends said, "It's quite late in the day, and we're all very hungry." But the old priest smiled, and asked him if the prophecy as to his future rank was true or not. Tseng bowed and begged him to explain; whereupon the old priest said, "For those who cultivate virtue, a lily will grow up even in the fiery pit." 13 Tseng had gone thither full of pride and vain-glory; he went home an altered man. From that day he thought no more of becoming a Secretary of State, but retired into the hills, and I know not what became of him after that.
LVII. THE COUNTRY OF THE CANNIBALS 1
At Chiao-chou 2 there lived a man named Hsii, who gained his living by trading across the sea. On one occasion he was carried far out of his course by a violent tempest, and
your husband. For the childless state is a hard one to bear ; " or, as Victor Hugo puts it in his LSgende des SiicleSy there is nothing so sad as ** la maison sans enfants." ^
1* This is the celebrated form of death, reserved for parricide and sinailar awful crimes, about which so much has been written. Strictly speaking, the malefactor should be literally chopped to pieces in order to prolong his agonies ; but the sentence is now rarely, if ever, carried out in its extreme sense. ^A few gashes are made upon the wretched victim's body, and he is soon put out of his misery by decapitation.
1* Alluding to a well-known Buddhist miracle, in which a bikshW was to be thrown into a cauldron of boiling water in a fiery pit, when suddenly a lotus-flower came forth, the fire was extinguished, and the water became cold.
1 The Chinese term — here translated " cannibals " — is a meaning- less in[iitation by two Chinese characters of the Sanscrit yakcha, or certain demons who feed upon human flesh.
- Hu6, the capital of Cochin-China.
R 2
