Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/138

 The old bronze table that pedestalled and throned Kwanyin Ko had not its match in Europe, neither in palace nor museum, and Kwanyin Ko, herself looted from a palace six hundred years ago, was worth something fabulous: no dealer would have sold her for sixty thousand yen.

The lapis-lazuli peacock, so exquisitely carved that its feathers were fine and delicate as those of the big birds that strutted in the sunshine on the terrace beyond the lotus pond (and the emerald points that studded each feather thickly and the threads of gold and silver that just showed their threads of burnishing here and there were real) was worth its weight in rubies.

In all the room—and it was large—there was not one thing that of its own kind was not the best. Wu had skimmed China relentlessly, and much of its cream was embowled here: Nang Ping's. And China is wide and rich. Every inlaid instrument of music that strewed the cushions and the floor, every classic book, the picture on the wall (there was only one picture, of course—a landscape by Ma Yuan—heavily framed in carved and inlaid camphor-wood) was a masterpiece, the culmination of some imperial art of an imperial people, art begotten of a spiritual and indomitable race's genius, and nursed and perfected by centuries of unfatigued patience. Cedar and sandal-wood and ivory hung and jutted from walls and painted ceiling in cornice and lambrequins cut into lace-work, as fine (though thicker) and as beautiful as any ever made on a Belgian pillow. Three hundred robes, each in its scented bag of silk, each costlier than the others, were piled on the next room's shelves of camphor-wood, and the lacquer chests of drawers and the carved coffers that stood beyond the sleeping mats were crammed with jewels. Nang Ping had sapphires that