“He must have been bitten by a poisonous insect!”
“Yes, and I know who it was,” said Lu Tsing to her attendants. “It was the golden Spider who sat on Nikko’s breast when she came! Everybody thought it was a pin, but it really was a Spider, for I saw him creep away!” and the attendants went about the palace telling everybody how Nikko had worn a live Spider for a pin.
Nikko was very anxious about her husband. He lay on a couch in the parlor because he was too ill to sit on his throne, and twenty doctors stood around and told him that a poisonous insect must have bitten him. Just then Lu Tsing came in, with a tea-cup in her hand.
“Behold what the maid found in his Majesty’s bed when she turned the mattress!” she cried, And showed them the golden Spider, who sat in the tea-cup and looked at them with great surprise.
“Why, it is the Spider that Nikko wore when she came,” said the Emperor. “We all thought it was a pin. And she said she had lost it. Nikko, you were fibbing!”
“Yes, I was fibbing,” Nikko admitted.
“Friends, Courtiers, Chinamen! I have changed my mind”
“And then she put the Spider into your Majesty’s bed!” cried all the people. “She is a wicked woman!”