Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/70

 But by, as it were, extending the five-fingered gesture of derision from the organ of contempt, you have invited the retaliatory propulsion of the sandal of authority."

"To one who has been pushed over the edge of a precipice, a rut across the path is devoid of menace; nor do the destitute tremble at the departing watchman's cry, 'Sleep warily; robbers are about.

"As regards bodily suffering and material extortion, it is possible to attain such a limit as no longer to excite the cupidity of even the most rapacious deity," admitted Leou. "Other forms of flattening out a transgressor's self-content remain however. For instance, it has come within the knowledge of the controlling Powers that seven generations of your distinguished ancestors occupy positions of dignified seclusion in the Upper Air."

For the first time Sun Wei's attitude was not entirely devoid of an emotion of concern.

"They would not?"

"To mark their sense of your really unsupportable behaviour it has been decided that all seven shall return to the humiliating scenes of their former existences in admittedly objectionable forms," replied the outrageous Leou. "Sun Chen, your venerated sire, will become an agile grasshopper; your incomparable grandfather, Yuen, will have the similitude of a yellow goat; as a tortoise your leisurely-minded ancestor Huang, the high public official" "Forbear!" exclaimed the conscience-stricken Sun Wei; "rather would this person suffer every imaginable form of torture than that the spirit of one of his revered ancestors should be submitted to so intolerable