Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/29

 purpose in a certain man named Ching K'o, a native of Wei, who had private reasons for hating the powerful despot. The great difficulty was to obtain an audience of the King; and Ching K'o suggested that the best means would be to take him, as a present, the head of the offending general. The King of Yen, however, peremptorily forbade so gross a breach of hospitality as the murder of his guest; and the plan would in all probability have fallen through had it not been that a strange but most original idea suggested itself to the intending assassin. He appealed to the general himself, representing that the injuries he had suffered at the hands of the King of Ts'in could only be mortally avenged through the sacrifice of his own life. "By giving me your head," urged Ching K'o, "you place it in my power to kill your own enemy, and to rid the world of its common oppressor; the whole empire will thus owe its enfranchisement to you." "I have but one desire left," replied the general, "and that is, revenge;" with which word he cut his throat, and fell dead upon the spot. Ching K'o then took off the head and repaired with it to the court of Ts'in, obtained an audience of the King, and presented him with his horrible offering. While Chêng was bending forward to examine it, the assassin struck at him with a dagger; but, owing to a quick motion of the King's body, he missed his aim. Recovering himself, he threw the dagger at the King; but it only grazed his robes, and the wretched man was overpowered after a brief struggle, in which he lost a leg. He then made a full confession of the whole conspiracy, and was accordingly put to death.

No better pretext than this could have been forthcoming for Chêng to turn his arms against the state of Yen. B