Hung Lou Meng - book 2 | Page 9

be as well to dress him up and let him go back a moment sooner from this world. You'll also be thus sparing him considerable suffering. But, if you persist, in not reconciling yourself to the separation and this breath of his is not cut off, he will lie there and suffer without any respite...."
Her arguments were scarcely ended, when she was spat upon by dowager lady Chia. "You rotten-tongued, good-for-nothing hag!" she cried abusively. "What makes you fancy him of no good! You wish him dead and gone; but what benefit will you then derive? Don't give way to any dreams; for, if he does die, I'll just exact your lives from you! It's all because you've been continuously at him, inciting and urging him to read and write, that his spirit has become so intimidated that, at the sight of his father, he behaves just like a rat trying to get out of the way of a cat! And is not all this the result of the bullying of such a mean herd of women as yourselves! Could you now drive him to death, your wishes would immediately be fulfilled; but which of you will I let off?"
Now she shed tears; now she gave vent to abuse.
Chia Cheng, who stood by, heard these invectives; and they so enhanced his exasperation that he promptly shouted out and made Mrs. Chao withdraw. He then exerted himself for a time to console (his senior) by using kindly accents. But suddenly some one came to announce that the two coffins had been completed. This announcement pierced, like a dagger, dowager lady Chia to the heart; and while weeping with despair more intense, she broke forth in violent upbraidings.
"Who is it,"--she inquired; "who gave orders to make the coffins? Bring at once the coffin-makers and beat them to death!"
A stir ensued sufficient to convulse the heavens and to subvert the earth. But at an unforeseen moment resounded in the air the gentle rapping of a 'wooden fish' bell. A voice recited the sentence: "Ave! Buddha able to unravel retribution and dispel grievances! Should any human being lie in sickness, and his family be solicitous on his account; or should any one have met with evil spirits and come across any baleful evils, we have the means to effect a cure."
Dowager lady Chia and Madame Wang at once directed servants to go out into the street and find out who it was. It turned out to be, in fact, a mangy-headed bonze and a hobbling Taoist priest. What was the appearance of the bonze?
His nose like a suspended gall; his two eyebrows so long, His eyes, resembling radiant stars, possessed a precious glow, His coat in tatters and his shoes of straw, without a home; Rolling in filth, and, a worse fate, his head one mass of boils.
And the Taoist priest, what was he like?
With one leg perchèd high he comes, with one leg low; His whole frame drenching wet, bespattered all with mud. If you perchance meet him, and ask him where's his home, "In fairyland, west of the 'Weak Water,' he'll say."
Chia Cheng ordered the servants to invite them to walk in. "On what hill," he asked those two persons, "do you cultivate the principles of reason?
"Worthy official!" the bonze smiled, "you must not ask too many questions! It's because we've learnt that there are inmates of your honourable mansion in a poor state of health that we come with the express design of working a cure."
"There are," explained Chia Cheng, "two of our members, who have been possessed of evil spirits. But, is there, I wonder, any remedy by means of which they could he healed?"
"In your family," laughingly observed the Taoist priest, "you have ready at hand a precious thing, the like of which is rare to find in the world. It possesses the virtue of alleviating the ailment, so why need you inquire about remedies?"
Chia Cheng's mind was forthwith aroused. "It's true," he consequently rejoined, "that my son brought along with him, at the time of his birth, a piece of jade, on the surface of which was inscribed that it had the virtue of dispelling evil influences, but we haven't seen any efficacy in it."
"There is, worthy officer," said the bonze, "something in it which you do not understand. That precious jade was, in its primitive state, efficacious, but consequent upon its having been polluted by music, lewdness, property and gain it has lost its spiritual properties. But produce now that valuable thing and wait till I have taken it into my hands and pronounced incantations over it, when it will become as full of efficacy as of old!"
Chia Cheng accordingly unclasped the piece of jade from Pao-yü's neck, and handed it to the two divines. The Buddhist