Fu-su repaired to the artists who cut out characters in blocks of hard wood, to the end that books may be printed from the same.  When he had fathomed their mystery he betook himself to a brass-founder, and learned how to cast in metal.  He then sought a learned man who had travelled much, and made himself acquainted with the Greek, Persian, and Arabic languages.  Then he cast a number of Greek characters in type, and putting them into a bag and providing himself with some wooden letter-tablets of his own carving, he departed to seek his fortune.  After innumerable hardships and perils he arrived in the land of Persia, and inquired for the great king.

“The great king is dead,” they told him, “and his head is entirely separated from his body.  There is now no king in Persia, great or small.”

“Where shall I find another great king?” demanded he.

“In the city of Alexandria,” replied they, “where the Commander of the Faithful is busy introducing the religion of the Prophet.”

Fu-su passed to Alexandria, carrying his types and tablets.

As he entered the gates he remarked an enormous cloud of smoke, which seemed to darken the whole city.  Before he could inquire the reason, the guard arrested him as a stranger, and conducted him to the presence of the Caliph Omar.

“Know, O Caliph,” said Fu-su, “that my countrymen are at once the wisest of mankind and the stupidest.  They have invented an art for the preservation of letters and the diffusion of knowledge, which the sages of Greece and India never knew, but they have not learned to take, and they refuse to be taught how to take, the one little step further necessary to render it generally profitable to mankind.”

And producing his tablets and types, he explained to the Caliph the entire mystery of the art of printing.

“Thou seemest to be ignorant,” said Omar, “that we have but yesterday condemned and excommunicated all books, and banished the same from the face of the earth, seeing that they contain either that which is contrary to the Koran, in which case they are impious, or that which is agreeable to the Koran, in which case they are superfluous.  Thou art further unaware, as it would seem, that the smoke which shrouds the city proceeds from the library of the unbelievers, consumed by our orders.  It will be meet to burn thee along with it.”

“O Commander of the Faithful,” said an officer, “of a surety the last scroll of the accursed ceased to flame even as this infidel entered the city.”

“If it be so,” said Omar, “we will not burn him, seeing that we have taken away from him the occasion to sin.  Yet shall he swallow these little brass amulets of his, at the rate of one a day, and then be banished from the country.”

The sentence was executed, and Fu-su was happy that the Court physician condescended to accept his little property in exchange for emetics.

He begged his way slowly and painfully back to China, and arrived at the covenanted spot at the expiration of the thirtieth year.  His father’s modest dwelling had disappeared, and in its place stood a magnificent mansion, around which stretched a park with pavilions, canals, willow-trees, golden pheasants, and little bridges.