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Page 50
"'There is, resting at a spot within the immediate neighbourhood, a
person of illustrious name and ancestry, who would doubtless be
gratified to witness the diverting actions of which this one has
recently been a spectator. As the reward of a tael cannot be unwelcome
to a person of your inferior appearance and unpresentable garments,
take up your box without delay, and follow the one who is now before
you.'
"With these words the richly-clad stranger led the way through a
narrow woodland path, closely followed by Sen, to whom the attraction
of the promised reward--a larger sum, indeed, than he had ever
possessed--was sufficiently alluring to make him determined that the
other should not, for the briefest possible moment, pass beyond his
sight.
"Not to withhold that which Sen was entirely ignorant of until a later
period, it is now revealed that the person in question was the
official Provider of Diversions and Pleasurable Occupations to the
sacred and illimitable Emperor, who was then engaged in making an
unusually extensive march through the eight Provinces surrounding his
Capital--for the acute and well-educated will not need to be reminded
that Nanking occupied that position at the time now engaged with.
Until his providential discovery of Sen, the distinguished Provider
had been immersed in a most unenviable condition of despair, for his
enlightened but exceedingly perverse-minded master had, of late,
declined to be in any way amused, or even interested, by the simple
and unpretentious entertainment which could be obtained in so
inaccessible a region. The well-intentioned efforts of the followers
of the Court, who engagingly endeavoured to divert the Imperial mind
by performing certain feats which they remembered to have witnessed on
previous occasions, but which, until the necessity arose, they had
never essayed, were entirely without result of a beneficial order.
Even the accomplished Provider's one attainment--that of striking
together both the hands and the feet thrice simultaneously, while
leaping into the air, and at the same time producing a sound not
unlike that emitted by a large and vigorous bee when held captive in
the fold of a robe, an action which never failed to throw the
illustrious Emperor into a most uncontrollable state of amusement when
performed within the Imperial Palace--now only drew from him the
unsympathetic, if not actually offensive, remark that the attitude and
the noise bore a marked resemblance to those produced by a person when
being bowstrung, adding, with unprepossessing significance, that of
the two entertainments he had an unevadable conviction that the
bowstringing would be the more acceptable and gravity-removing.
"When Sen beheld the size and the silk-hung magnificence of the camp
into which his guide led him, he was filled with astonishment, and at
the same time recognized that he had acted in an injudicious and hasty
manner by so readily accepting the offer of a tael; whereas, if he had
been in possession of the true facts of the case, as they now
appeared, he would certainly have endeavoured to obtain double that
amount before consenting. As he was hesitating within himself whether
the matter might not even yet be arranged in a more advantageous
manner, he was suddenly led forward into the most striking and
ornamental of the tents, and commanded to engage the attention of the
one in whose presence he found himself, without delay.
"From the first moment when the inimitable creatures began, at Sen's
spoken word, to go through the ordinary details of their domestic
affairs, there was no sort of doubt as to the nature of the success
with which their well-trained exertions would be received. The dark
shadows instantly forsook the enraptured Emperor's select brow, and
from time to time he expressed himself in words of most unrestrained
and intimate encouragement. So exuberant became the overjoyed
Provider's emotion at having at length succeeded in obtaining the
services of one who was able to recall his Imperial master's unclouded
countenance, that he came forward in a most unpresentable state of
haste, and rose into the air uncommanded, for the display of his
usually not unwelcome acquirement. This he would doubtless have
executed competently had not Sen, who stood immediately behind him,
suddenly and unexpectedly raised his voice in a very vigorous and
proficient duck cry, thereby causing the one before him to endeavour
to turn around in alarm, while yet in the air--an intermingled state
of movements of both the body and the mind that caused him to abandon
his original intention in a manner which removed the gravity of the
Emperor to an even more pronounced degree than had been effected by
the diverting attitudes of the insects.
"When the gratified Emperor had beheld every portion of the tasks
which Sen had instilled into the minds of the insects, down even to
the minutest detail, he called the well-satisfied Provider before him,
and addressing him in a voice which might be designed to betray either
sternness or an amiable indulgence, said:
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