In the fourteenth year of the reign of the usurper Fuh-chi a little breeze rising in the Province of Sz-chuen began to spread through all the land and men’s minds were again agitated by the memory of a hope which had long seemed dead.  At that period the tyrannical Fuh-chi finally abandoned the last remaining vestige of restraint and by his crimes and excesses alienated even the protection of the evil spirits and the fidelity of his chosen guard; so that he conspired with himself to bring about his own destruction.  One discriminating adviser alone had stood at the foot of the throne, and being no less resolute than far-seeing, he did not hesitate to warn Fuh-chi and to hold the prophetic threat of rebellion before his eyes.  Such sincerity met with the reward not difficult to conjecture.

“Who are our enemies?” exclaimed Fuh-chi, turning to a notorious flatterer at his side, “and where are they who are displeased with our too lenient rule?”

“Your enemies, O Brother of the Sun and Prototype of the Red-legged Crane, are dead and unmourned.  The living do naught but speak of your clemency and bask in the radiance of your eye-light,” protested the flatterer.

“It is well said,” replied Fuh-chi.  “How is it, then, that any can eat of our rice and receive our bounty and yet repay us with ingratitude and taunts, holding their joints stiffly in our presence?  Lo, even lambs have the grace to suck kneeling.”

“Omnipotence,” replied the just minister, “if this person is deficient in the more supple graces of your illustrious Court it is because the greater part of his life has been spent in waging your wars in uncivilized regions.  Nevertheless, the alarm can be as competently sounded upon a brass drum as by a silver trumpet, and his words came forth from a sincere throat.”

“Then the opportunity is by no means to be lost,” exclaimed Fuh-chi, who was by this time standing some distance from himself in the effects of distilled pear juice; “for we have long desired to see the difference which must undoubtedly exist between a sincere throat and one bent to the continual use of evasive flattery.”

Without further consideration he ordered that both persons should be beheaded and that their bodies should be brought for his inspection.  From that time there was none to stay his hand or to guide his policy, so that he mixed blood and wine in foolishness and lust until the land was sick and heaved.

The whisper starting from Sz-chuen passed from house to house and from town to town until it had cast a network over every province, yet no man could say whence it came or by whom the word was passed.  It might be in the manner of a greeting or the pledging of a cup of tea, by the offer of a coin to a blind beggar at the gate, in the fold of a carelessly-worn garment, or even by the passing of a leper through a town.  Oppression still lay heavily upon the people; but it was without aim and carried no restraint;