Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/19

 As the Prince had insisted upon Lü Pu-wei occupying a palace near his own, in order that their intercourse might be as free and unrestricted as possible, no very considerable time elapsed before his eye fell upon the lovely mistress of his tutor. This girl, instructed by Lü Pu-wei, simulated an excessive coyness, which, added to the many personal graces with which she was endowed, inflamed still more the growing passion of the Prince. The prospect of becoming Queen, and mother of a King, was sufficiently dazzling to one who was even then no more than the property of her employer, and she fell readily into his schemes. At last the fish was hooked; I-jên avowed his passion to his friend, and begged him to let him have the girl. Lü Pu-wei hung back, and affected some resentment. The Prince, however, returned so frequently to the charge, that Lü Pu-wei found no difficulty in pretending to be won over by degrees, and eventually gave his consent. "I give you my most cherished possession," he said, as he yielded to his victim's importunities; "and I only ask that you will see in this act of self-sacrifice a proof of my complete devotion to your person."

It is probable that the merchant so arranged the matter as to make his concubine over to the Prince as soon as ever she declared herself enceinte. Some writers have hesitated to believe that the child she afterwards bore was really the son of Lü Pu-wei, on the ground that she had been already living with the latter for a considerable time, and the child was not born for a full year afterwards. It has been urged, too, that as the name of Chêng is held in execration by the literati of China generally, as the incendiary of books, they have framed this story by way