Chinese Literature Part 53

EMPEROR. My sorrows are beyond control. Cease to upbraid this excess of feeling, since ye are all subject to the same. Yon doleful cry is not the note of the swallow on the carved rafters, nor the song of the variegated bird upon the blossoming tree. The princess has abandoned her home! Know ye in what place she grieves, listening like me to the screams of the wild bird?

_Enter President_.

PRESIDENT. This day after the close of the morning council, a foreign envoy appeared, bringing with him the fettered traitor Maouyenshow. He announces that the renegade, by deserting his allegiance, led to the breach of truce, and occasioned all these calamities. The princess is no more! and the K'han wishes for peace and friends.h.i.+p between the two nations. The envoy attends, with reverence, your imperial decision.

EMPEROR. Then strike off the traitor's head, and be it presented as an offering to the shade of the princess! Let a fit banquet be got ready for the envoy, preparatory to his return. _[Recites these verses_.

At the fall of the leaf, when the wild-fowl's cry was heard in the recesses of the palace.

Sad dreams returned to our lonely pillow; we thought of her through the night: Her verdant tomb remains--but where shall we seek her self?

The perfidious painter's head shall atone for the beauty which he wronged.

[Footnote 1: There is nothing in this more extravagant than the similar vision in the tragedy of Richard III.]

[Footnote 2: Yengo, a species of wild goose, is the emblem in China of inters.e.xual attachment and fidelity, being said never to pair again after the loss of its mate. An image of it is wors.h.i.+pped by newly married couples.]

[Footnote 3: Literally, "dragon person." The emperor's throne is often called the "dragon seat."]