VIII.

Mien-yaun now abandoned himself to grief.  He laid away the peacock’s feather on a lofty shelf, and took to cotton breeches.  Mien-yaun in cotton breeches!  What stronger confirmation could be needed of his utter desolation?  As he kept himself strictly secluded, he knew nothing of the storm of ridicule that was sweeping his once illustrious name disgracefully through the city.  He knew not that a popular but unscrupulous novelist had caught up the sad story and wrought it into three thrilling volumes,—­nor that an enterprising dramatist had constructed a closely-written play in five acts, founded on the event, and called “The Judgment of Taoli, or Vanity Rebuked,” which had been prepared, rehearsed, and put upon the stage by the second night after the occurrence.  He would gladly have abdicated the throne of fashion; he cared nothing for that;—­but it was well that he was spared the humiliation of seeing his Ching-ki-pin’s name held up to public scorn; that would have destroyed the feeble remains of intellect which yet inhabited his bewildered brain.

Occasionally he would address the most piteous entreaties to his cruel parent, but always unavailingly.  He had not the spirit to show resentment, even if the elementary principles would have permitted it.  The reaction of his life had come.  This first great sorrow had completely overwhelmed him, and, like most young persons in the agony of a primal disappointment, he believed that the world had now no charms for him, and that in future his existence would be little better than a long sad bore.  He looked back upon his career of gaudy magnificence without regret, and felt like a blase butterfly, who would gladly return to the sober obscurity of the chrysalis.  He found that wealth and station, though they might command the admiration of the world, could not insure him happiness; and he thought how readily he would resign all the gifts and glories which Fortune had showered on him for the joyous hope, could he dare to indulge it, of a cottage on the banks of the Grand Canal, with his darling Ching-ki-pin at his side.

Thus passed away some months.  At last, one day, he ventured forth, in hope of meeting some former friend, in whose confiding ear he might whisper his many sorrows.  He had not proceeded twenty paces before a group of young gallants, who in earlier days had been the humblest of his satellites, brushed rudely by him, without acknowledging his courteous salutation.  Thinking that anguish might have changed his features beyond recognition, he walked on, and soon met one with whom his intimacy had been unlimited.  He paused, and accosted him.

The other stared coldly upon him, said he had a faint remembrance of Mien-yaun, but Mien-yaun was passe now, since that affair with old Tching-whang’s daughter, and he must really be excused from entering into conversation with any one so excessively behind the fashionable times.