Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/138

 126 CHINESE LITERATURE

"Two respectable philanthropists, hearing of my friend's weakness, proceeded to tax him on the subject ; and with many gestures of disapprobation, fierce scowls, and gnashing of teeth, preached him quite a sermon on the rules of propriety, and sent his faults buzzing round his head like a swarm of bees.

"When they began, the old gentleman filled himself another bumper ; and sitting down, quietly stroked his beard and sipped his wine by turns, until at length he lapsed into a semi-inebriate state of placid enjoyment, varied by intervals of absolute unconsciousness or of partial return to mental lucidity. His ears were beyond the reach of thunder ; he could not have seen a moun- tain. Heat and cold existed for him no more. He knew not even the workings of his own mind. To him, the affairs of this world appeared but as so much duckweed on a river ; while the two philanthropists at his side looked like two wasps trying to convert a caterpillar" (into a wasp, as the Chinese believe is done).

Another was Hsi K'ANG, a handsome young man, seven feet seven inches in height, who was married a doubtful boon into the. Imperial family. His favourite study was alchemistic research, and he passed his days sitting under a willow-tree in his courtyard and experi- menting in the transmutation of metals, varying his toil with music and poetry, and practising the art of breath- ing with a view to securing immortality. Happening, however, to offend by his want of ceremony one of the Imperial princes, who was also a student of alchemy, he was denounced to the Emperor as a dangerous person and a traitor, and condemned to death. Three thousand disciples offered each one to take the place of their beloved master, but their request was not granted. He

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