II.

Satiated with success, Mien-yaun at length became weary of the ceaseless round of flattering triumphs, and began to lament that no higher step on the social staircase remained for him to achieve.  Alas that discontent should so soon follow the realization of our brightest hopes!  What, in this world, is enough?  More than we have!  Mien-yaun felt all the pangs of anxious aspiration, without knowing how to alleviate them.  He was only conscious of a deep desolation, for which none of the elementary principles he had learned from Kei-ying afforded the slightest consolation.  He now avoided publicity from inclination, rather than from any systematic plan of action.  He dressed mostly in blue, a sufficient sign of a perturbed spirit.  He discarded the peacock’s feather, as an idle vanity, and always came forth among the world arrayed in ultramarine gowns and cerulean petticoats.  His stockings, especially, were of the deepest, darkest, and most beautiful blue.  The world of fashion saw, and was amazed; but in less than, a week all Pekin had the blues.  Annoyed at what a few months before he would have delighted in as another convincing proof of his influential position, Mien-yaun fled the city, and sought relief in a cruise up and down the Peiho, in his private junk.  As he neared the Gulf of Pe-tche-lee, the sea-breeze brought calm to his troubled spirit and imparted renewed vigor to his wearied mind.  A degree of resolution, to which he had heretofore been a stranger, possessed him.  His courage returned.  He would go back to Pekin.  He would renounce those vain pursuits in which he had passed his unworthy life.  Henceforth he would strive for nobler aims.  Something great and wonderful he certainly would accomplish,—­the exact nature of which, however, he did not pause to consider.

As he reentered the city, he was obliged to pass through that quarter which is inhabited by the Kung,—­the working and manufacturing classes.  His attention was suddenly arrested by feminine cries of distress; and, turning a corner, he came upon a domestic scene so common in China that it would hardly have attracted his notice but for a peculiar circumstance.  A matron, well advanced in years, was violently beating a young and beautiful girl with a bit of bamboo; and the peculiar circumstance that enforced Mien-yaun’s interest was, that, as the maiden turned her fair face towards him, she smiled through her tears and telegraphed him a fragrant kiss, by means of her fair fingers.  Naturally astounded, he paused, and gazed upon the pair.  The younger female was the loveliest maid he had ever looked upon.  She had the smallest eyes in the world, the most tempting, large, full, pouting lips, the blackest and most abundant hair, exquisitely plaited, and feet no bigger than her little finger.  As these are the four characteristics of female beauty dearest to a Chinaman’s heart, it is no wonder that Mien-yaun thought her a paragon.  The old woman, on the contrary, was hideously ugly.  Her teeth were gone, and her eyes sought the comforting assistance of an ill-fitting pair of crystal spectacles.  She had no hair, and her feet might have supported an elephant.  As he rested his eyes wistfully upon them, the young woman discharged a second rapturous salute.  His heart beat with singular turbulence, and he approached.