Chapter 4

Meanwhile the wives of both Tou and Kouan were both blessed each with a child. Madame Tou became the mother of a charming girl, and Madame Kouan of the handsomest boy in the world. Each family was ignorant of the happy event which had brought joy into the home of the other, for although their houses were so near together the families were as far apart as if they had been separated by the great wall of the empire, or the ocean itself. What mutual friends they still possessed, never alluded to the affairs of one in the house of the other; even the servants had been forbidden to exchange words with each other, under pain of death.

The boy was named Tchin-Sing, and the girl Ju-Kiouan, that is to say, Jasper and Pearl. Their perfect beauty fully justified the choice of their names. As they grew old enough to take notice of their surroundings, the unsightly wall attracted their attention, and each inquired of their parents why that strange barrier was placed across the centre of such a charming sheet of water, and to whom belonged the great trees of which they could see the topmost boughs.

Each was told that on the farther side of the wall was the habitation of a strange and wicked family, and that it had been placed there as a protection against such disagreeable neighbors.

This explanation was sufficient for the children. They grew accustomed to the sight and thought no more about it.

Ju-Kiouan grew in grace and beauty. She was skilled in all lady-like accomplishments. The butterflies which she embroidered upon satin appeared to live and beat their wings, and one could almost hear the song of the birds which grew under her fingers, and smell the perfume of the flowers she wrought upon canvas. She knew the "Book of Odes" by heart, and could repeat the five rules of life without missing a word. Her handwriting was perfection, and she composed in all the different styles of Chinese poetry. Her poems were upon all those delicate themes which would attract the mind of a pure young girl; upon the return of the swallows, the daisies, the weeping willows and similar topics, and were of such merit as to win much praise from the wise men of the country.

Tchin-Sing was not less forward in his accomplishments, and his name stood at the head of his class. Although he was very young he had already gained the right to wear the black cap of the wise men, and all the mothers in the country about wished him for a son-in-law. But Tchin-Sing had but one answer to all proposals; it was too soon, and he desired his liberty for some time to come. He refused the hand of Hon-Giu, of Oma, and other beautiful young girls. Never was a young man more courted and more overwhelmed with sweets and flowers than he, but his heart remained insensible to all attractions. Not on account of its coldness, for he appeared full of longing for an object to adore. His heart seemed fixed upon some memory, some dream, perhaps, for whose realization he was waiting and hoping. It was all in vain to tell him of beautiful tresses, languishing eyes, and soft hands waiting for his acceptance. He listened with a distracted air, as if thinking of other things.

Ju-Kiouan was not less difficult to please. She refused all suitors for her hand. This did not salute her gracefully, that was not dainty in his habits; one had a bad handwriting, another composed poor verses; in short all had some defect. She drew amusing caricatures of everyone, which made her parents laugh, and show the door to the unlucky lover in the most polite manner possible.

At last the parents of both young people became alarmed at the continued refusal of their children to marry, and the mothers commenced to follow the subject in their dreams. One night Madame Kouan dreamed that she saw a pearl of wonderful purity reposing on the breast of her son. On the other hand, Madame Tou dreamed that on her daughter's forehead sparkled a jasper of inestimable value. Much consultation was held as to the significance of these dreams. Madame Kouan's was thought to imply that her son would win the highest honors of the Imperial Academy, while Madame Tou's might signify that her daughter would find some untold treasure in the garden. These interpretations, however, did not satisfy the two mothers, whose whole minds were bent upon the happy marriage of their children. Unfortunately both Tchin-Sing and Ju-Kiouan persisted more obstinately than ever in their refusal to listen to the subject.

As young people are not usually so averse to marriage, the parents suspected some secret attachment, but a few days' careful watching sufficed to prove that Tchin-Sing was paying court to no young girl, and that no lover was to be seen under the balcony of Ju-Kiouan.

At length both mothers decided to consult the bronze oracle in the temple of Fo. After burning gilt paper and perfume before the oracle, Madame Tou received the unsatisfactory answer that, until the jasper appeared, the pearl would unite with no one, and Madame Kouan was told the jasper would take nothing to his bosom but the pearl. Both women went sadly homeward in deeper perplexity than ever.

One day Ju-Kiouan was leaning pensively on the balcony of her pavilion, precisely at the same time when Tchin-Sing was standing by his. The day was clear as crystal, and not a cloud floated in the blue space above. There was not sufficient wind to move the lightest twigs of the willows, and the surface of the water was glistening and placid as a mirror, only disturbed, here and there, when some tiny gold-fish leaped for an instant into the sunshine. The trees and grassy banks were reflected so distinctly that it was impossible to tell where the real world left off, and the land of dreams began. Ju-Kiouan was amusing herself watching the beauteous water-picture when her eyes fell upon that portion of the lake, near the wall, where, with all the clearness of reality, was the reflection of the pavilion on the opposite shore.

She had never noticed it before, and what was her surprise to behold an exact reproduction of the one where she was standing, the gilded roof, the red and black pillars, and all the beauteous drapery about the doors. She would have been able to read the inscription upon the tablets, had they not been reversed. But what surprised her more than all was to see, leaning on the balcony, a figure which, if it had not come from the other side of the lake, she would have taken for her own reflection. It was the mirrored image of Tchin-Sing. At first she took it for the reflection of a girl, as he was dressed in robes according to the fashion of the time. As the heat was intense, he had thrown off his student's cap, and his hair fell about his fresh, beardless face. But soon Ju-Kiouan recognized, from the violent beating of her heart, that the reflection in the water was not that of a young girl.

Until then she had believed that the earth contained no being created for her, and had often indulged in pensive revery over her loneliness. Never, said she, shall I take my place as a link between the past and future of my family, but I shall enter among the shadows as a lonely shade.

But when she beheld the reflection in the water, she found that her beauty had a sister, or, more properly speaking, a brother. Far from being displeased to discover that her beauty was not unrivaled, she was filled with intense joy. Her heart was beating and throbbing with love for another, and in that instant Ju-Kiouan's whole life was changed. It was foolish in her to fall violently in love with a reflection, of whose reality she knew nothing, but after all she was only acting like nearly all young girls who take a husband for his white teeth or his curly hair, knowing nothing whatever of his real character.

Tchin-Sing had also perceived the charming reflection of the young girl. "I am dreaming," he cried. "That beautiful image upon the water is the combination of sunshine and the perfume of many flowers. I recognize it well. It is the reflection of the image within my own heart, the divine unknown whom I have worshiped all my life."

Tchin-Sing was aroused from his monologue by the voice of his father, who called him to come at once to the grand saloon.

"My son," said he, "here is a very rich and very learned man who seeks you as a husband for his daughter. The young girl has imperial blood in her veins, is of a rare beauty, and possesses all the qualities necessary to make her husband happy."

Tchin-Sing, whose heart was bursting with love for the reflection seen from the pavilion, refused decidedly. His father, carried away with passion, heaped upon him the most violent imprecations.

"Undutiful child," said he, "if you persist in your obstinacy, I will have you confined in one of the strongest fortresses of the empire, where you will see nothing but the sea beating against the rocks, and the mountains covered with mist. There you will have leisure to reflect, and repent of your wicked conduct."

These threats did not frighten Tchin-Sing in the least. He quickly replied that he would accept for his wife the first maiden who touched his heart, and until then he should listen to no one.

The next day, at the same hour, he went to the pavilion on the lake, and, leaning on the balcony, eagerly watched for the beloved reflection. In a few moments he saw it glisten in the water, beauteous as a boquet of submerged flowers.

A radiant smile broke over the face of the reflection, which proved to Tchin-Sing that his presence was not unpleasant to the lovely unknown. But as it was impossible to hold communication with a reflection whose substance is invisible, he made a sign that he would write, and vanished into the interior of the pavilion. He soon reappeared, bearing in his hand a silvered paper, upon which he had written a declaration of love in seven-syllabled stanzas. He carefully folded his verses and placed them in the cup of a white flower, which he rolled in a leaf of the water-lily, and placed the whole tenderly upon the surface of the lake.

A light breeze wafted the lover's message through the arches of the wall, and it floated so near Ju-Kiouan that she had only to stretch out her hand to receive it. Fearful of being seen she returned to her private boudoir, where she read with great delight the expressions of love written by Tchin-Sing. Her joy was all the greater, as she recognized from the exquisite hand-writing and choice versification that the writer was a man of culture and talent. And when she read his signature, the significance of which she perceived at once, remembering her mother's dream, she felt that heaven had sent her the long desired companion.

The next day the breeze blew in a different direction, so that Ju-Kiouan was able to send an answer in verse by the same subtle messenger, by which, notwithstanding her girlish modesty, it was easy to see that she returned the love of Tchin-Sing.

On reading the signature, Tchin-Sing could not repress an exclamation of surprise and delight. "The pearl," said he, "that is the precious jewel my mother saw glittering on my bosom. I must at once entreat this young girl's hand of her parents, for she is the wife appointed for me by the oracle."

As he was preparing to go, he suddenly remembered the dislike between the two families, and the prohibitions inscribed upon the tablet over the entrance. Determined to win his prize at any cost, he resolved to confide the whole history to his mother. Ju-Kiouan had also told her love to Madame Tou. The names of Pearl and Jasper troubled the good matrons so much that, not daring to set themselves against what appeared to be the will of the gods, they both went again to the temple of Fo.

The bronze oracle replied that this marriage was in reality the true interpretation of the dreams, and that to prevent it would be to incur the eternal anger of the gods. Touched by the entreaties of the mothers, and also by slight mutual advances, the two fathers gave way and consented to a reconciliation of the families. The two old friends, on meeting each other again, were astonished to find what frivolous causes had separated them for so many years, and mourned sincerely over all the pleasure they had lost in being deprived of each other's society. The marriage of the children was celebrated with much rejoicing, and the Jasper and the Pearl were no longer obliged to hold intercourse by means of a reflection on the water. The wall was removed, and the wavelets rippled placidly between the two pavilions on the lake.

--_H.S. Conant._

_IN THE MOUNTAINS._

A line of Walter Savage Landor's, a poet for poets, was an especial favorite with Southey, and, we believe, with Lamb. It occurs in "Gebir," and drops from the lips of one of its characters, who, being suddenly shown the sea, exclaims,

"Is this the mighty ocean?--is this all?"

The feeling which underlies this line is generally the first emotion we have when brought face to face with the stupendous forms of Nature. It is the feeling inspired by mountains, the first sight of which is disappointing. They are grand, but not quite what we were led to expect from pictures and books, and, still more, from our own imaginations. The more we see mountains, the more they grow upon us, until, finally, they are clothed with a grandeur not, in all cases, belonging to them--our Mount Washingtons over-topping the Alps, and the Alps the Himmalayas. The poets assist us in thus magnifying them.

The American poets have translated the mountains of their native land into excellent verse. Everybody remembers Mr. Bryant's "Monument Mountain," for its touching story, and its clearly-defined descriptions of scenery.

Mr. Stedman has a mountain of his own, though perhaps only in Dream-land; and Mr. Bayard Taylor has a whole range of them, the sight of which once filled him with rapture:

"O deep, exulting freedom of the hills! O summits vast, that to the climbing view In naked glory stand against the blue! O cold and buoyant air, whose crystal fills Heaven's amethystine gaol! O speeding streams That foam and thunder from the cliffs below! O slippery brinks and solitudes of snow And granite bleakness, where the vulture screams! O stormy pines, that wrestle with the breath Of every tempest, sharp and icy horns And hoary glaciers, sparkling in the morns, And broad dim wonders of the world beneath! I summon ye, and mid the glare that fills The noisy mart, my spirit walks the hills."

* * * * *

GLADNESS OF NATURE.--Midnight--when asleep so still and silent--seems inspired with the joyous spirit of the owls in their revelry--and answers to their mirth and merriment through all her clouds. The moping owl, indeed!--the boding owl, forsooth! the melancholy owl, you blockhead! why, they are the most cheerful, joy-portending, and exulting of God's creatures. Their flow of animal spirits is incessant--crowing cocks are a joke to them--blue devils are to them unknown--not one hypochondriac in a thousand barns--and the Man-in-the-Moon acknowledges that he never heard one utter a complaint.

_THE NOONING._

Mr. Darley's very characteristic picture on the opposite page needs no description, it so thoroughly explains itself, and realizes his intention. The following lines from Mary Howitt seem very appropriate to the sketch:

"O golden fields of bending corn, How beautiful they seem! The reaper-folk, the piled up sheaves, To me are like a dream; The sunshine and the very air Seem of old time, and take me there."

_A MANDARIN._

FROM THE FRENCH OF AUGUSTE VITU.

It was Saturday night, and the pavement sparkled with frost diamonds under flashing lights and echoing steps in the opera quarter. Tinkling carnival bells and wild singing resounded from all the carriages dashing towards Rue Lepelletier; the shops were only half shut, and Paris, wide awake, reveled in a fairy-night frolic.

And yet, Felix d'Aubremel, one of the bright applauded heroes of those orgies, seemed in no mood to answer their mad challenge. Plunged in a deep armchair, hands drooping and feet on the fender, he was sunk in sombre revery. An open book lay near him, and a letter was flung, furiously crumpled, on the floor.

An orphan at the age of twelve, Felix had watched his mother's slow death through ten years of suffering. The Marquis Gratien d'Aubremel, ruined by reckless dissipation, and driven by necessity, rather than love, into a marriage with an English heiress, Margaret Malden, deserted her, like the wretch he was, as soon as the last of her dowry melted away. A common story enough, and ending in as common a close. D'Aubremel sailed for the Indies to retrieve his fortune, and met death there by yellow fever. So that the sad lessons of Felix's family life stimulated to excess his innate leaning towards misanthropy--if that name may define a resistless urgency of belief in the appearances of evil, linked with a doubt of the reality of good. Probably, at heart, he believed himself incapable of a bad action, but he would take no oath to such a conviction, since by his theory every man must yield under certain circumstances, attacking powerfully his personal interest, while threatening slight danger of failure or detection. This style of thought, set off by a fair share of witty expression and ever-ready impertinence, gave Felix a kind of ascendancy in his circle of intimates--but naturally it gained him no friends. Common reputation grows out of words rather than actions, and Felix suffered the just penalty of his sceptical fancies. They cost him more than they were worth, as he had just learned by sad experience.

He had chanced to make the acquaintance of a rich manufacturer, Montmorot by name, whose daughter Ernestine was pleased with the devotion of a charming young fellow, who mingled the rather reckless grace of French cleverness with a reserved style and refined pride gained from the English blood of the Maldens. For his part, Felix really loved the girl, and had let his impatience, that very day, carry him into a step that failed to move the elder Montmorot's inflexibility. He refused absolutely to give his daughter to a man without fortune or prospects. Felix was crushed, his hopes all shattered at a blow, by this answer, though he had a thousand reasons to expect it. And at what a moment! A half-unfolded red ticket, stuffed with disgusting threats, peeped out from between the wall and his sofa. The officers of justice had paid him a little visit. He got into a passion with himself.

"Pshaw," he cried, "confound all scruples! If I had been less in love I should be Ernestine's husband now. With a pretty wife, one I am so fond of, too, I should have fortune, position, and the luxury indispensable to my life--now, I don't know where to lay my head to-morrow. To-morrow, at ten o'clock, the sheriff will seize everything--everything, from that Troyou sketch to that china monster, nodding his frightful sneering head at me. They will carry off this casket that was my father's--this locket, with the hair of--of--what the deuce was her name? Poor girl! how she loved me! And now all that is left of her vanishes--even her name!

"What, nothing? no hope? Not even one of those silly impulses that used to drive me out into the streets when everybody else was abed, with the firm conviction that at some crossing, in some gutter, some unknown deity must have dropped a fat pocket-book, on purpose for me! I believed in something, then--even in lost pocket-books. And now, now! I would commit no such follies as that, but I believe I could be guilty of even worse things, if crime, common, low, contemptible, shameful crime, were not forbidden to the son of the Marquis d'Aubremel and Margaret Malden.

"Oh, great genius!" he went on, taking up the open book near him, "great philosopher, called a sophist by the ignorant--how deep a truth you uttered in writing these lines, that I never read over without a shudder: 'Imagine a Chinese mandarin, living in a fabulous country three thousand leagues away, whom you have never seen and shall never see--imagine, moreover, that the death of this mandarin, this man, almost a myth, would make you a millionaire, and that you have but to lift your finger, at home, in France, to bring about his death, without the possibility of ever being called to account for it by any one; say, what would you do?'

"That fearful passage must have made many men dream--and does not Bianchon, that great materialist, so well painted by Balzac, confess that he has got as far as his thirty-third mandarin? What a St. Bartholomew of mandarins, if my philosopher's supposition could grow into a truth!"

Felix ceased his soliloquy, and bent his head to let the storm raised in his soul by the atheist philosopher pass over. His bad instincts, aroused, spoke louder at that instant than reason, louder than reality. His glance fell on the chimney-piece, where a porcelain figure, the grotesque _chef d'oeuvre_ of some great Chinese artist, leered at him with its everlasting grin. The young man smiled. "Perhaps that is the likeness of a mandarin--bulbous nose, hanging cheeks, moustaches drooping like plumes, a peaked head, knotty hands--a regular deformity. Reflecting on the ugliness of that idiotic race, there is much to be urged by way of excuse for people who kill mandarins."

Some persistent thought evidently haunted Felix's mind. Again he drove it off, and again it beset him.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, after a last brief struggle, "I am alone, and out of sorts. I will amuse myself with a carnival freak, a mere theoretic and philosophic piece of nonsense. I have tried many worse ones. It wants a quarter to twelve. I give myself fifteen minutes to study my spells. Let me see, what mandarin shall I murder? I don't know any, and I have no peerage list of the Flowery Empire. Let me try the newspapers."

It was in the height of the English war with China. On the seventh column of the paper our hero found a proclamation signed by the imperial commissioners, Lin, Lou, Lun, and Li.

"Here goes for Li," he said to himself. "He is likely to be the youngest."

The clock began to strike, announcing the hour. Felix placed himself solemnly before the mirror, and said aloud, in a grave tone: "If the death of Mandarin Li will make me rich and powerful, whatever may come of it, I vote for the death of Mandarin Li." He lifted his finger--at that instant the porcelain figure rocked on its base, and fell in fragments at Felix's feet. The glass reflected his startled face. He thrilled for an instant with superstitious terror, but recollecting that his finger had touched the fragile figure, he accounted for it as an accident, and went to bed and to such repose as a debtor can enjoy with an execution hanging over his head.

Masks and dominos made the street merry under his window. The opera ball was unusually brilliant, experts said, and nothing made the Parisians aware that on the night of January 12th, 1840, Felix d'Aubremel had passed sentence of death on Chinaman Li, son of Mung, son of Tseu, a literate mandarin of the 114th class.

Nine months later Felix d'Aubremel was living in furnished lodgings in an alley off the Rue St. Pierre, and living by borrowing. The gentlemanly sceptic owed his landlady a good deal of money; his clothes were aged past wearing, and his tailor had long ago broken off all relations with him. The Marquis d'Aubremel was within a hairsbreadth of that utterly crushed state that ends in madness, or in suicide--which is only a variety of madness.

One morning while sitting in the glass cage that leads to the staircase of every lodging-house, waiting to beg another respite from his landlady, he took up a newspaper, and the following notice was lucky enough to catch his attention.