“Kublai-Chan covered his lips with his hand, for kings should not be seen to tremble. His guards, strong men, red-haired, tigers nourished by blood, looked on each other with white faces, and Kuang Sai, in his robes of honor, crouched and scrabbled in the dirt with his fingers and whispered and driveled.
“They led him away, and all his life long he had no more the light of reason, but sat and mowed and muttered and laughed foolishly, except when the king’s bell rang, and then he would fall and lie with his mouth in the dust.
“Behold! in an auspicious hour here come the bearers. Shall we walk to meet them? My tale has eaten up the waiting. But Heaven Born doubts its truth. Before we go, I will ring the great bell for him.”
Chen caught the suspended beam by which Chinese bells are rung, swung it, and struck the shining side of the bell, and the deep boom echoed over the flat plain. It was truly a tremendous sound, and justified the belief that it could be heard to the confines of the kingdom, and gradually the rippling circles of sound died down to silence.
Jarvis, standing with his hands in his belt, was forming his lips to say, ‘But where’s the scream?’ when Chen raised his hand for silence, and then, within the arch of the great bell, began a buzzing, like bees—a little sound, like trickling water or the roaring in a shell; and this thread of sound grew and gathered till suddenly there pealed out, full-throated, the cry of a woman in agony of body and soul—a sound to dream of and wake at night with your teeth on edge.
“That, excellency,” said Chen, “is Fen Sai crying for her shoe.”
Jarvis answered nothing, but he walked faster toward the coming bearers, and though the sun was hot on his back, his bones felt cold.
Man could direct his ways by plain reason and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and performers, to enliven the days of man’s pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl.—Sidney Smith. (1771–1845.)