Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/189

 lived outside, and no one was admitted on any pretext but that of urgent business. He loved to pore over those deep, bold volumes of Taoist philosophy which Laotzŭ, Chuang-tzŭ, and the other masters of that school have bequeathed to an ungrateful posterity, and which are now regarded by the bigoted Confucianists as the embodiments of all that is heterodox and wrong; but his dearest pleasure was in the cultivation of his magnificent garden, to the laying out of which he had devoted thirty years of his voluptuous but innocent existence. His mansion stood surrounded by flowers—by a splendid wilderness of flowers—gleaming with all those gorgeous colours which only skilful culture can produce, and flourishing on all sides with a luxuriance past conception. In this floral paradise he reigned alone and supreme. He tended his precious flowers with the solicitude of a nurse and the homage of a devotee; while the only sorrows that ever reached him were such as resulted from the blighting of a geranium or the death of a favourite rose.

Having lived for many years in this state of philosophic indolence—which is extolled by Taoist writers as the summit of all obtainable happiness and wisdom—an event occurred which seriously interrupted the noiseless tenor of his way. It was "blue night." The moon shone with unexampled splendour, pouring its silvery effulgence over the garden, and spiritualising every twig and leaf with liquid lustre. Absolute quiet reigned in the little paradise; not a breath of air was heard; and the philosopher was utterly unable to tear himself away from the bewitching influences around him. As he stood, silent and absorbed, a shadow seemed to flit among the M