Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/20

 of throwing dishonour on his birth. But it is as difficult to believe that so clever a scamp as Lü Pu-wei would have made so clumsy a blunder in his calculations, as that the future Emperor was born after an abnormal pregnancy of twelve months. The fact appears to be that only eight months elapsed between the surrender of the slave-girl to the Prince, and the birth of the child; and in this case the probabilities are certainly in favour of the popular version of its paternity.

No suspicion, however, seems to have suggested itself to the mind of the confiding Prince. He was so much in love with his new bride, and so delighted with the son she presented to him, that he declared his resolution to raise the former to the rank of legal wife, and the latter to the position of his acknowledged heir. As regards the second part of his intention, there need have been no difficulty; for though married for a considerable time, he had no other children. But his wish to make the mother of the child a Princess was firmly resisted by that lady herself, who, acting under the instructions of her accomplice, declined the proposed honour, on the score of her humble origin. She continued to busy herself with household affairs; she nursed her infant herself, and treated her less fortunate companions in the harem with so much meekness and docility as to disarm all jealousy, and even to win their love. She played a waiting game, and lost nothing by her unaspiring policy.

And now we must glance for a moment at what had been going on in the state of Ts'in. It seems to have been a necessity on the part of the old King, Chao Hsiang Wang, to be perpetually at war with somebody; and having no pretext for attacking the states of Han, Wei,