This seemed a somewhat startling proposition, and I said so, but he proceeded to explain. I shall not easily forget his little monologue, every word of which I remember for a very sad and poignant reason. Well, he knows all about it now, and I hope he is happy.
"It is in this way," he said. "By death a man joins the great company of ancestors who are, to us, people of almost more consequence than living folk, and of much more individual distinction. It is then at last," he continued, delicately sipping his tea, "that the individual receives that recognition which was denied him in the flesh. Our ancestors are given a dwelling of their own and devotedly reverenced. This, I know, will seem strange to Western ears, but believe me, honorable sir, the cult is anything but funereal. For the ancestral tombs are temples and pleasure pavilions at the same time, consecrated not simply to rites and ceremonies, but to family gatherings and general jollification."
This was quite a new view to me, and certainly interesting. I said so, and Pu-Yi smiled and bowed.
"And the fortunate defunct," he went on, "if he is still half as sentient as his dutiful descendants suppose, must feel that his earthly life, like other approved comedies, has ended well!"
His voice was sad, but there was a faint, malicious mockery in it also, and as I looked at him with an answering smile to his own, I wondered whether that keen and subtle brain really believed in the customs of his land. That he would be studious and rigid in their outward observance, I knew.
I never met, as I have said before, a more courteous gentleman than Pu-Yi.
"Ever been in South Germany?" said Morse suddenly—he had evidently been pursuing a train of his own thought while the Chinaman held forth.
"Yes, Mr. Morse, why?"
"Then in some of those quaint, old-fashioned towns you have seen the storks nesting on the roofs of the houses?"
I remembered that I had.