Kai Lung’s Golden Hours quotes

After a lavish explosion of firecrackers had been discharged, sonorous bells rung and gongs beaten, a venerable geomancer disclosed by means of certain tests that all doubtful influences had been driven off and that truth and impartiality alone remained.

“Except on the part of the prisoners, doubtless,” remarked the Mandarin, thereby imperilling the gravity of all who stood around.

“The first of those to prostrate themselves before your enlightened clemency, Excellence, is a notorious assassin who, under another name, has committed many crimes,” began the execrable Ming-shu.

“He confesses that, now calling himself Kai Lung, he has recently journeyed from Loo-chow, where treason ever wears a smiling face.”

“Perchance he is saddened by our city’s loyalty,” interposed the benign Shan Tien, “for if he is smiling now it is on the side of his face removed from this one’s gaze.”

“The other side of his face is assuredly where he will be made to smile ere long,” acquiesced Ming-shu, not altogether to his chief’s approval, as the analogy was already his.

“Suffer not that apprehension to retard your impending eloquence,” replied Shan Tien affably.

“Be assured that the gods have exactly the same manner of behaving in every land.”

“Furthermore,” continued Cho-kow, with patient craft, “I am a man of barbarian tongue, the full half of my speech being foreign to your ear.

“Unless the subject is one that has painful associations,” remarked Tian considerately, “it is one on which this person would willingly learn somewhat deeper. What, in short, are the various differences existing between gods and men?”

“The gods are gods; men are men,” replied Ning. “There is no other difference.”

“Yet why do not the gods now exert their strength and raise from your present admittedly inferior position one who is of their band?”

“By what title?” demanded Wong Pao contentiously.

“By the same that confers this well-appointed palace upon you,” replied Sun: “because it is my home.”

“The point is one of some subtlety,” admitted Wong Pao, “and might be pursued to an extreme delicacy of attenuation if it were argued by those whose profession it is to give a variety of meanings to the same thing.

It is of Lao Ting that the saying has arisen,

“He who can grasp Opportunity as she slips by does not need a lucky dream.”

So far, however, Lao Ting may be judged to have had neither opportunities nor lucky dreams. He was one of studious nature and from an early age had devoted himself to a veneration of the Classics.

“There are times when the classical perfection of our graceful tongue is strangely inadequate to express emotion,” confessed Kai Lung, colouring deeply, as Hwa-mei stood revealed before him. “

It is truly said: ‘The ingenuity of a guileless woman will undermine nine mountains.’

You have cut off all the words of my misgivings.”

Then Kai Lung, neither bound nor wearing the wooden block, was led into the presence of Shan Tien, and allowed to seat himself upon the floor as though he plied his daily trade.

“Sooner or later it will certainly devolve upon this person to condemn you to a violent end,” remarked the farseeing Mandarin reassuringly.

“In the ensuing interval, however, there is no need for either of us to dwell upon what must be regarded as an unpleasant necessity.”

“

Beware of helping yourself to corn from the manger of the blind mule.

”

Amid this eulogy Hwa-mei moved craftily and played an insidious part, until she who was their appointed head was committed to the claim. Then the maiden raised a contentious voice.

“Our lord’s trout were ever salmon,”

she declared, “and lo! here is another great and weighty fish! Assuredly no living man is thus and thus; or are the T’ang epicists returned to earth? Truly our noble one is easily pleased—in many ways!”

“Esteemed,” interposed Chang Tao, with smooth determination, “wisdom lurks in the saying: ‘

He who considers everything decides nothing.

’ Already this person has spent an unprofitable score of years through having no choice in the matter; at this rate he will spend yet another score through having too much. Your timely word shall be his beacon.

“

Even a mole may instruct a philosopher in the art of digging,

” replied the maiden, with graceful tolerance. “Thus among those uncouth tribes it is the custom, when a valiant youth would enlarge his face in the eyes of a maiden, that he should encounter forth and slay dragons, to the imperishable glory of her name.

“

In such delicate matters those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know,

” replied the other sympathetically. “Yet for what purpose should one who would pass as a pacific student seek to encounter dragons?”

“The explanation is simple and assuring.

It is, in reality, very easy to kill a dragon, but it is impossible to keep him dead.

The reason for this is that the Five Essential Constituents of fire, water, earth, wood and metal are blended in our bodies in the Sublime or Indivisible proportion.

“Agreeably so,” admitted Chang Tao, and then, fearing that so far his reply had been inadequate, he added: “Yet, despite the facts, there are moments when this person almost doubts if he did not make a wrong decision in the matter after all.”

“That is a very common complaint,” said Pe-lung, becoming most offensively amused.

“Truly,” agreed the other. “There is, then, a whisper in the province that the floor of the Imperial treasury is almost visible.”

“The rumour, as usual, exaggerates the facts grossly,” replied the Greatest. “The floor of the Imperial treasury is quite visible.”

“Yet on the first day of the next moon the not inconsiderable revenue contributed by those who present themselves for the examination will flow in.”

“Also, upon leaving he asked for ink, brushes and a fan, and upon it he inscribed certain words.” She thereupon handed the fan to Ten-teh, who read, written in characters of surpassing beauty and exactness, the proverb: “

Well-guarded lips, patient alertness and a heart conscientiously discharging its accepted duty: these three things have a sure reward.

”

“It is well said,” replied Fuh-chi. “How is it, then, that any can eat of our rice and receive our bounty and yet repay us with ingratitude and taunts, holding their joints stiffly in our presence?

Lo, even lambs have the grace to suck kneeling.

”

From that time there was none to stay his hand or to guide his policy, so that he mixed blood and wine in foolishness and lust until the land was sick and heaved.

The whisper starting from Sz-chuen passed from house to house and from town to town until it had cast a network over every province, yet no man could say whence it came or by whom the word was passed.

It might be in the manner of a greeting or the pledging of a cup of tea, by the offer of a coin to a blind beggar at the gate, in the fold of a carelessly-worn garment, or even by the passing of a leper …

… dutiful Chou Yii could destroy herself and her family at one blow to the end that her son might serve his sovereign with a single heart, how degraded an outcast must he be who would obtrude his own trivial misfortunes at so critical a time.”

“ ‘A thorn in one’s own little finger is more difficult to endure than a sword piercing the sublime Emperor’s arm,’ ”

replied the headman, resuming his occupation. “But if your angle of regarding the various obligations is as you have stated it, then there is obviously nothing more to be said.

Yet even nowadays, by the protection of the deities, the bullock might reach us.”

“The wheel-grease of the cart would alone make the day memorable,” murmured another.

“O brothers,” interposed one who had not yet spoken, “do not cause our throats to twitch convulsively; nor is it in any way useful to leave the date of solid reflection in pursuit of the stone of light and versatile fancy.