Sometimes it was found that all the work indeed had not failed; for the
color seemed good, and all faultless the matter of the vase appeared to
be, having neither crack nor wrinkling nor crinkling; but the pliant
softness of warm skin did not meet the eye; the flesh-tinted surface
offered only the harsh aspect and hard glimmer of metal. All their
exquisite toil to mock the pulpiness of sentient substance had left no
trace; had been brought to nought by the breath of the furnace. And Pu,
in his despair, shrieked to the Spirit of the Furnace: "O thou merciless
divinity! O thou most pitiless god!--thou whom I have worshipped with
ten thousand sacrifices!--for what fault hast thou abandoned me? for
what error hast thou forsaken me? How may I, most wretched of men! ever
render the aspect of flesh made to creep with the utterance of a Word,
sentient to the titillation of a Thought, if thou wilt not aid me?"

And the Spirit of the Furnace made answer unto him with roaring of
fire: "_Canst thou divide a Soul? Nay!... Thy life for the life of thy
work!--thy soul for the soul of thy Vase!_"

And hearing these words Pu arose with a terrible resolve swelling at his
heart, and made ready for the last and fiftieth time to fashion his work
for the oven.

One hundred times did he sift the clay and the quartz, the _kao-ling_
and the _tun_; one hundred times did he purify them in clearest water;
one hundred times with tireless hands did he knead the creamy paste,
mingling it at last with colors known only to himself. Then was the vase
shapen and reshapen, and touched and retouched by the hands of Pu, until
its blandness seemed to live, until it appeared to quiver and to
palpitate, as with vitality from within, as with the quiver of rounded