he had ever possessed--was
sufficiently alluring to make him determined that the other should not,
for the briefest possible moment, pass beyond his sight.

"Not to withhold that which Sen was entirely ignorant of until a later
period, it is now revealed that the person in question was the official
Provider of Diversions and Pleasurable Occupations to the sacred
and illimitable Emperor, who was then engaged in making an unusually
extensive march through the eight Provinces surrounding his Capital--for
the acute and well-educated will not need to be reminded that Nanking
occupied that position at the time now engaged with. Until his
providential discovery of Sen, the distinguished Provider had been
immersed in a most unenviable condition of despair, for his enlightened
but exceedingly perverse-minded master had, of late, declined to be
in any way amused, or even interested, by the simple and unpretentious
entertainment which could be obtained in so inaccessible a region. The
well-intentioned efforts of the followers of the Court, who engagingly
endeavoured to divert the Imperial mind by performing certain feats
which they remembered to have witnessed on previous occasions, but
which, until the necessity arose, they had never essayed, were entirely
without result of a beneficial order. Even the accomplished Provider's
one attainment--that of striking together both the hands and the feet
thrice simultaneously, while leaping into the air, and at the same time
producing a sound not unlike that emitted by a large and vigorous bee
when held captive in the fold of a robe, an action which never failed
to throw the illustrious Emperor into a most uncontrollable state of
amusement when performed within the Imperial Palace--now only drew
from him the unsympathetic, if not actually offensive, remark that the
attitude and the noise bore a marked resemblance to those produced by a
person when being bowstrung, adding, with unprepossessing significance,
that of the two entertainments he had an unevadable conviction that the
bowstringing would be the more acceptable and gravity-removing.

"When Sen beheld the size and the silk-hung magnificence of the camp
into which his guide led him, he was filled with astonishment, and at
the same time recognized that he had acted in an injudicious and hasty
manner by so readily accepting the offer of a tael; whereas, if he had
been in possession of the true facts of the case, as they now appeared,
h