murderers for their deeds and to tempt the weak and vicious to all
manner of unmentionable crimes."

So overcome was Ling by the distressing nature of the oversight he had
permitted that he could find no words with which to comfort Mian, who,
after some moments, continued:

"There are even worse visions of degradation which occur to this
person. By chance, that which was once the noble-minded Ling may be
disposed of, not to the Imperial Treasury for converting into pieces
of exchange, but to some undiscriminating worker in metals who will
fashion out of his beautiful and symmetrical stomach an elegant food-
dish, so that from the ultimate developments of the circumstance may
arise the fact that his own descendants, instead of worshipping him,
use his internal organs for this doubtful if not absolutely unclean
purpose, and thereby suffer numerous well-merited afflictions, to the
end that the finally-despised Ling and this discredited person,
instead of founding a vigorous and prolific generation, become the
parents of a line of feeble-minded and physically-depressed lepers."

"Oh, my peacock-eyed one!" exclaimed Ling, in immeasurable distress,
"so proficient an exhibition of virtuous grief crushes this misguided
person completely to the ground. Rather would he uncomplainingly lose
his pigtail than--"

"Such a course," said a discordant voice, as the unpresentable person
Wang stepped forth from behind a hanging curtain, where, indeed, he
had stood concealed during the entire conversation, "is especially
forbidden by the twenty-third detail of the things to be done and not
to be done."