“These observances are well enough,” admitted Leou, restraining his narrow-minded impatience; “and with an ordinary number of written charms worn about the head and body they would doubtless carry you through the lesser contingencies of existence.  But by, as it were, extending contempt, you have invited the retaliatory propulsion of the sandal of authority.”

“To one who has been pushed over the edge of a precipice, a rut across the path is devoid of menace; nor do the destitute tremble at the departing watchman’s cry:  ‘Sleep warily; robbers are about.’”

“As regards bodily suffering and material extortion, it is possible to attain such a limit as no longer to excite the cupidity of even the most rapacious deity,” admitted Leou.  “Other forms of flattening-out a transgressor’s self-content remain however.  For instance, it has come within the knowledge of the controlling Powers that seven generations of your distinguished ancestors occupy positions of dignified seclusion in the Upper Air.”

For the first time Sun Wei’s attitude was not entirely devoid of an emotion of concern.

“They would not—?”

“To mark their sense of your really unsupportable behaviour it has been decided that all seven shall return to the humiliating scenes of their former existences in admittedly objectionable forms,” replied the outrageous Leou.  “Sun Chen, your venerated sire, will become an agile grasshopper; your incomparable grandfather, Yuen, will have the similitude of a yellow goat; as a tortoise your leisurely-minded ancestor Huang, the high public official—­”

“Forbear!” exclaimed the conscience-stricken Sun Wei; “rather would this person suffer every imaginable form of torture than that the spirit of one of his revered ancestors should be submitted to so intolerable a bondage.  Is there no amiable form of compromise whereby the ancestors of some less devoted and liberally-inspired son might be imperceptibly, as it were, substituted?”

“In ordinary cases some such arrangement is generally possible,” conceded Leou; “but not idly is it written:  ’There is a time to silence an adversary with the honey of logical persuasion, and there is a time to silence him with the argument of a heavily-directed club.’  In your extremity a hostage is the only efficient safeguard.  Seize the person of one of the gods themselves and raise a strong wall around your destiny by holding him to ransom.”

“’Ho Tai, requiring a light for his pipe, stretched out his hand towards the great sky-lantern,’” quoted Sun Wei.

“‘Do not despise Ching To because his armour is invisible,’” retorted Leou, with equal point.  “Your friends in the Above are neither feeble nor inept.  Do as I shall instruct you and no less a Being than Ning will be delivered into your hand.”

Then replied Sun Wei dubiously:  “A spreading mango-tree affords a pleasant shade within one’s courtyard, and a captive god might for a season undoubtedly confer an enviable distinction.  But presently the tree’s encroaching roots may disturb the foundation of the house so that the walls fall and crush those who are within, and the head of a restrained god would in the end certainly displace my very inadequate roof-tree.”