himself round, he stood up, and, drawing near the table, he took up the pencil, and eagerly composed these enigmatical lines:
If thou wert me to test, and I were thee to test,
Our hearts were we to test, and our minds to test,
When naught more there remains for us to test
That will yea very well be called a test,
And when there's naught to put, we could say, to the test,
We will a place set up on which our feet to rest.
After he had finished writing, he again gave way to fears that though he himself could unfold their meaning, others, who came to peruse these lines, would not be able to fathom them, and he also went on consequently to indite another stanza, in imitation of the 'Parasitic Plant,' which he inscribed at the close of the enigma; and when he had read it over a second time, he felt his heart so free of all concern that forthwith he got into his bed, and went to sleep.
But, who would have thought it, Tai-yue, upon seeing Pao-yue take his departure in such an abrupt manner, designedly made use of the excuse that she was bent upon finding Hsi Jen, to come round and see what he was up to.
'He's gone to sleep long ago!' Hsi Jen replied.
At these words, Tai-yue felt inclined to betake herself back at once; but Hsi Jen smiled and said: 'Please stop, miss. Here's a slip of paper, and see what there is on it!' and speedily taking what Pao-yue had written a short while back, she handed it over to Tai-yue to examine. Tai-yue, on perusal, discovered that Pao-yue had composed it, at the spur of the moment, when under the influence of resentment; and she could not help thinking it both a matter of ridicule as well as of regret; but she hastily explained to Hsi Jen: 'This is written for fun, and there's nothing of any consequence in it!' and having concluded this remark, she readily took it along with her to her room, where she conned it over in company with Hsiang-yuen; handing it also the next day to Pao-ch'ai to peruse. The burden of what Pao-ch'ai read was:
In what was no concern of mine, I should to thee have paid no heed,
For while I humour this, that one to please I don't succeed!
Act as thy wish may be! go, come whene'er thou list; 'tis naught to
me.
Sorrow or joy, without limit or bound, to indulge thou art free!
What is this hazy notion about relatives distant or close?
For what purpose have I for all these days racked my heart with woes?
Even at this time when I look back and think, my mind no pleasure
knows.
After having finished its perusal, she went on to glance at the Buddhistic stanza, and smiling: 'This being,' she soliloquised; 'has awakened to a sense of perception; and all through my fault, for it's that ballad of mine yesterday which has incited this! But the subtle devices in all these rationalistic books have a most easy tendency to unsettle the natural disposition, and if to-morrow he does actually get up, and talk a lot of insane trash, won't his having fostered this idea owe its origin to that ballad of mine; and shan't I have become the prime of all guilty people?'
Saying this, she promptly tore the paper, and, delivering the pieces to the servant girls, she bade them go at once and burn them.
'You shouldn't have torn it!' Tai-yue remonstrated laughingly. 'But wait and I'll ask him about it! so come along all of you, and I vouch I'll make him abandon that idiotic frame of mind and that depraved language.'
The three of them crossed over, in point of fact, into Pao-yue's room, and Tai-yue was the first to smile and observe. 'Pao-yue, may I ask you something? What is most valuable is a precious thing; and what is most firm is jade, but what value do you possess and what firmness is innate in you?'
But as Pao-yue could not, say anything by way of reply, two of them remarked sneeringly: 'With all this doltish bluntness of his will he after all absorb himself in abstraction?' While Hsiang-yuen also clapped her hands and laughed, 'Cousin Pao has been discomfited.'
'The latter part of that apothegm of yours,' Tai-yue continued, 'says:
'We would then find some place on which our feet to rest.
'Which is certainly good; but in my view, its excellence is not as yet complete! and I should still tag on two lines at its close;' as she proceeded to recite:
'If we do not set up some place on which our feet to rest,
For peace and freedom then it will be best.'
'There should, in very truth, be this adjunct to make it thoroughly explicit!' Pao-ch'ai added. 'In days of yore, the sixth founder of the Southern sect, Hui Neng, came, when he went first in search of his patron, in the Shao Chou district; and upon hearing that the fifth founder, Hung Jen, was at Huang Mei, he readily entered his service in the capacity of Buddhist cook; and when the fifth founder, prompted by a wish to select a Buddhistic successor, bade his neophytes and all the bonzes to each compose an enigmatical stanza, the one who occupied the upper seat, Shen Hsiu, recited:
'A P'u T'i tree the body is, the heart so like a stand of mirror
bright,
On which must needs, by constant careful rubbing, not be left dust to
alight!
'And Hui Neng, who was at this time in the cook-house pounding rice, overheard this enigma. 'Excellent, it is excellent,' he ventured, 'but as far as completeness goes it isn't complete;' and having bethought himself of an apothegm: 'The P'u T'i, (an expression for Buddha or intelligence),' he proceeded, 'is really no tree; and the resplendent mirror, (Buddhistic term for heart), is likewise no stand; and as, in fact, they do not constitute any tangible objects, how could they be contaminated by particles of dust?' Whereupon the fifth founder at once took his robe and clap-dish and handed them to him. Well, the text now of this enigma presents too this identical idea, for the simple fact is that those lines full of subtleties of a short while back are not, as yet, perfected or brought to an issue, and do you forsooth readily give up the task in this manner?'
'He hasn't been able to make any reply,' Tai-yue rejoined sneeringly, 'and must therefore be held to be discomfited; but were he even to make suitable answer now, there would be nothing out of the common about it! Anyhow, from this time forth you mustn't talk about Buddhistic spells, for what even we two know and are able to do, you don't as yet know and can't do; and do you go and concern yourself with abstraction?'
Pao-yue had, in his own mind, been under the impression that he had attained perception, but when he was unawares and all of a sudden subjected to this question by Tai-yue, he soon found it beyond his power to give any ready answer. And when Pao-ch'ai furthermore came out with a religious disquisition, by way of illustration, and this on subjects, in all of which he had hitherto not seen them display any ability, he communed within himself: 'If with their knowledge, which is indeed in advance of that of mine, they haven't, as yet, attained perception, what need is there for me now to bring upon myself labour and vexation?'
'Who has, pray,' he hastily inquired smilingly, after arriving at the end of his reflections, 'indulged in Buddhistic mysteries? what I did amounts to nothing more than nonsensical trash, written, at the spur of the moment, and nothing else.'
At the close of this remark all four came to be again on the same terms as of old; but suddenly a servant announced that the Empress (Yuean Ch'un) had despatched a messenger to bring over a lantern-conundrum with the directions that they should all go and guess it, and that after they had found it out, they should each also devise one and send it in. At these words, the four of them left the room with hasty step, and adjourned into dowager lady Chia's drawing room, where they discovered a young eunuch, holding a four-cornered, flat-topped lantern, of white gauze, which had been specially fabricated for lantern riddles. On the front side, there was already a conundrum, and the whole company were vying with each other in looking at it and making wild guesses; when the young eunuch went on to transmit his orders, saying: 'Young ladies, you should not speak out when you are guessing; but each one of you should secretly write down the solutions for me to wrap them up, and take them all in together to await her Majesty's personal inspection as to whether they be correct or not.'
Upon listening to these words, Pao-ch'ai drew near, and perceived at a glance, that it consisted of a stanza of four lines, with seven characters in each; but though there was no novelty or remarkable feature about it, she felt
