At this terrible wish on the lips of a girl, the good master very nearly forgot even his most valuable precept—never to be surprised. He regarded his defiant young companion in sheer amazement.
“Have a care, have a care, my daughter!” he said at length. “The blessed Saint James telleth us that the tongue is a little member, but it can kindle a great fire. How mayst thou hope to say such direful words against the Son of Heaven(1) and live?”
(1) “The Son of Heaven” is one of the chief titles of the Chinese emperor.
“The Son of Heaven killed the emperor, my father,” said the child.
“The emperor thy father!” Thomas the Nestorian almost gasped in this latest surprise. “Is the girl crazed or doth she sport with one who seeketh her good?” And amazement and perplexity settled upon his face.
“The Princess Woo is neither crazed nor doth she sport with the master,” said the girl. “I do but speak the truth. Great is Tai-tsung. Whom he will he slayeth, and whom he will he keepeth alive.” And then she told the astonished priest that the bannerman of the Dragon Gate was not her father at all. For, she said, as she had lain awake only the night before, she had heard enough in talk between the bannerman and his wife to learn her secret—how that she was the only daughter of the rightful emperor, the Prince Kung-ti, whose guardian and chief adviser the present emperor had been; how this trusted protector had made away with poor Kung-ti in order that he might usurp the throne; and how she, the Princess Woo, had been flung into the swift Hwang-ho, from the turbid waters of which she had been rescued by the bannerman of the Dragon Gate.
“This may or may not be so,” Thomas the Nestorian said, uncertain whether or not to credit the girl’s surprising story; “but even were it true, my daughter, how couldst thou right thyself? What can a girl hope to do?”
The young princess drew up her small form proudly. “Do?” she cried in brave tones; “I can do much, wise O-lo-pun, girl though I am! Did not a girl save the divine books of Confucius, when the great Emperor Chi-Hwang-ti did command the burning of all the books in the empire? Did not a girl—though but a soothsayer’s daughter—raise the outlaw Liu Pang straight to the Yellow Throne? And shall I, who am the daughter of emperors, fail to be as able or as brave as they?”
The wise Nestorian was shrewd enough to see that here was a prize that might be worth the fostering. By the assumption of mystic knowledge, he learned from the bannerman of the Dragon Gate, the truth of the girl’s story, and so worked upon the good bannerman’s native superstition and awe of superior power as to secure the custody of the young princess, and to place her in his mission-house at Tung-Chow for teaching and guidance. Among the early Christians, the Nestorians held peculiarly helpful and elevating ideas of the worth and proper condition of woman. Their precepts were full of mutual help, courtesy, and fraternal love. All these the Princess Woo learned under her preceptor’s guidance. She grew to be even more assertive and self-reliant, and became, also, expert in many sports in which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River. Her troubled guardian, in much anxiety, set out to find the truant; and, finally, in the course of his search, climbed the high bluff from which he saw the massive walls, the many gateways, the gleaming roofs, and porcelain towers of the Imperial city of Chang-an-the City of Continuous Peace.
But even before he had entered its northern gate, a little maid in loose silken robe, peaked cap, and embroidered shoes had passed through that very gateway, and slipping through the thronging streets of the great city, approached at last the group of picturesque and glittering buildings that composed the palace of the great Emperor Tai.