from their chairs and prostrated
themselves before him.

In the fourteenth year of the reign of the usurper Fuh-chi a little
breeze rising in the Province of Sz-chuen began to spread through all
the land and men's minds were again agitated by the memory of a hope
which had long seemed dead. At that period the tyrannical Fuh-chi
finally abandoned the last remaining vestige of restraint and by his
crimes and excesses alienated even the protection of the evil spirits
and the fidelity of his chosen guard; so that he conspired with
himself to bring about his own destruction. One discriminating adviser
alone had stood at the foot of the throne, and being no less resolute
than far-seeing, he did not hesitate to warn Fuh-chi and to hold the
prophetic threat of rebellion before his eyes. Such sincerity met with
the reward not difficult to conjecture.

"Who are our enemies?" exclaimed Fuh-chi, turning to a notorious
flatterer at his side, "and where are they who are displeased with our
too lenient rule?"

"Your enemies, O Brother of the Sun and Prototype of the Red-legged
Crane, are dead and unmourned. The living do naught but speak of your
clemency and bask in the radiance of your eye-light," protested the
flatterer.

"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."

"Omnipotence," replied the just minister, "if this person is deficient
in the more supple graces of your illustrious Court it is because the
greater part of his life has been spent in waging your wars in
uncivilized regions. Nevertheless, the alarm can be as competently
sounded upon a brass drum as by a silver trumpet, and his words came
forth from a sincere throat."

"Then the opportunity is by no means to be lost," exclaimed Fuh-chi,
who was by this time standing some distance from himself in the
effects of distilled pear juice; "for we have long desired to see the
difference which must undoubtedly exist between a sincere throat and
one bent to the continual use of evasive flattery."

Without further consideration he ordered that both persons should be
beheaded and that their bodies should be brought for his inspection.
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