The magistrate then, in a fit of intoxication, fell prone. The retainers, all thinking him dead, gathered in the courtyard to prepare for his burial. They saw him fallen to the earth, but they remarked that the bodies of others who had died from this evil had all been left on the verandah, but his was in the lower court. They raised him up in order to prepare him for burial, when suddenly he came to life, looked at them in anger, and asked what they meant. Fear and amazement possessed them. From that time on there was no more smell.
XXXI
THE TEMPLE TO THE GOD OF WAR
[Yi Hang-bok.—When he was a child a blind fortune-teller came and cast his future, saying, “This boy will be very great indeed.”
At seven years of age his father gave him for subject to write a verse on “The Harp and the Sword,” and he wrote—
“The Sword pertains to the Hand of the Warrior
And the Harp to the Music of the Ancients.”
At eight he took the subject of the “Willow before the Door,” and wrote—