Since they had agreed to the mission, the two women rendered a plain account of the events of that night, showing the pills which the bonzes had given them, and also their boxes of vermilion and black.
The bonzes, seeing that their schemes were brought to light, felt their livers turn and their hearts put out of working. They groaned in their secret despair, while the fourteen culprits beat the earth with their brows and begged for mercy.
"Miserable wretches, you dare to preach divine intervention, so that you may deceive the foolish and outrage the virtuous! What have you to say?"
But the cunning Superior already had his plan. He ordered all the bonzes to kneel, and said:
"These unhappy ones whom you have convicted are without excuse. But they were the only ones who dared to act so. All my other monks are pure. You have been able to discover the shame of the guilty, which I in my ignorance could not, and there is nothing for it but to put them to death."
The Governor smiled:
"Then it is only the cells which these two women occupied that have secret passages?"
"There are only those two cells," answered the unblushing Superior.
"We shall question all the other women, and then see."
The female visitors, who had already been wakened by the noise, came in turns to give their evidence. They were all in agreement: no bonze had come to trouble them. But the Governor knew that shame would prevent them from speaking, and therefore had them searched. In the pocket of each was found a little packet of pills. He asked them whence these came; but the women, purple in the face and scarlet in the neck, answered no word.