father in matters of commerce expressed his fixed determination that
the most deserving and enlightened of his friend's sons should enter
into a marriage agreement with his daughter, there was no manner of
hesitation among those concerned, who admitted without any questioning
between themselves that Quen was undeniably the one referred to.

"Though naturally not possessing an insignificant intellect, a
continuous habit, together with a most irreproachable sense of filial
duty, subdued within Quen's internal organs whatever reluctance he
might have otherwise displayed in the matter, so that as courteously
as was necessary he presented to the undoubtedly very ordinary and
slow-witted maiden in question the gifts of irretrievable intention,
and honourably carried out his spoken and written words towards her.

"For a period of years the circumstances of the various persons did
not in any degree change, Quen in the meantime becoming more
pure-souled and inward-seeing with each moon-change, after the manner
of the sublime Lien-ti, who studied to maintain an unmoved endurance
in all varieties of events by placing his body to a greater extent
each day in a vessel of boiling liquid. Nevertheless, the good and
charitable deities to whom Quen unceasingly sacrificed were not
altogether unmindful of his virtues; for a son was born, and an evil
disease which arose from a most undignified display of uncontrollable
emotion on her part ended in his wife being deposited with becoming
ceremony in the Family Temple.

"Upon a certain evening, when Quen sat in his inner chamber
deliberating upon the really beneficent yet somewhat inexplicable
arrangement of the all-seeing ones to whom he was very amiably
disposed in consequence of the unwonted tranquillity which he now