Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/132



Let us go back to the man's house together, and see if we can't put him to the question."

When they arrived the teacher went up to Hsi-men Tzŭ and said to him, without any preface—

"How is it that you have been speaking so insultingly to Pei-kung Tzŭ? Be good enough to inform me."

"It is simply this," replied Hsi-men Tzŭ. " Pei-kung Tzŭ maintained that all the conditions of our two lives were similar, while our fortunes were quite different. I told him that I couldn't account for it excepting on the ground that he was not so richly endowed with natural gifts as I was. How, I asked him, could he have the audacity to say that we stood upon an equal footing?"

"According to you," rejoined the teacher, "wealth and poverty of natural endowments amount simply to differences in ability and virtue. Now, my definition is quite another thing. The truth is, that Pei-kung Tzŭ is rich in merit but poor in destiny. You are rich in destiny but poor in merit. Your success in life is not a prize due to your wisdom. Pei-kung Tzŭ's failure is not a loss resulting from his stupidity. It is all a matter of fate; it does not rest with the individual. Again, you pride yourself at his expense because of your lucky star; he, on the other hand, suffers shame in spite of his wealth of worth. In short, you neither of you understand the doctrine of Predestination."

"Pray, Sir, forbear," said Hsi-men Tzŭ. "I do not dare to answer you."

Then Pei-kung Tzŭ, departing, found the common clothes he wore as warm as fur of fox or badger, his pulse of beans as toothsome as the finest rice, and his thatched house as protective as a lordly mansion; he mounted his old cabbage-cart as though it were a chariot of state, and spent the whole of his after-life in the happiest frame of mind, caring not a jot whether glory or shame fell to the lot of himself or anybody else.