Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/298

 adviser alone had stood at the foot of the throne, and being no less resolute than far-seeing, he did not hesitate to warn Fuh-chi and to hold the prophetic threat of rebellion before his eyes. Such sincerity met with the reward not difficult to conjecture.

"Who are our enemies?" exclaimed Fuh-chi, turning to a notorious flatterer at his side, "and where are they who are displeased with our too lenient rule?"

"Your enemies, O Brother of the Sun and Prototype of the Red-legged Crane, are dead and unmourned. The living do naught but speak of your clemency and bask in the radiance of your eye-light," protested the flatterer.

"It is well said," replied Fuh-chi. "How is it then that any can eat of our rice and receive our bounty and yet repay us with ingratitude and taunts, holding their joints stiffly in our presence? Lo, even lambs have the grace to suck kneeling."

"Omnipotence," replied the just minister, "if this person is deficient in the more supple graces of your illustrious court it is because the greater part of his life has been spent in waging your wars in uncivilised regions. Nevertheless, the alarm can be as competently sounded upon a brass drum as by a silver trumpet, and his words came forth from a sincere throat."

"Then the opportunity is by no means to be lost," exclaimed Fuh-chi, who was by this time standing some distance from himself in the effects of distilled pear juice; "for we have long desired to see the difference which must undoubtedly exist between a sincere throat and one bent to the continual use of evasive flattery."