Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
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more tolerant of his daily stupidities.
Positively Soun was coming to the conclusion that he could not find a better master, and now his precious pigtail wriggled on his back in unwonted security.
A Chinese proverb says,—
“To be happy on earth, one must live at Canton, and die at Liao-Tcheou.”
It is indeed true that at Canton one finds every luxury of life, and at Liao-Tcheou the best coffins are manufactured.
Kin-Fo did not fail to leave an order with the best house that his last bed of repose might arrive in time. To have a proper couch for the eternal sleep is the constant thought of every Celestial who knows how to live.
Kin-Fo at the same time bought a white cock, whose part, as one knows, is to embody departing spirits, and seize in their flight one of the seven elements of which a Chinese soul is composed.
One sees that if the pupil of the philosopher Wang showed himself indifferent to the details of life, he was much less so to those of death.
That being done, he had only to arrange the programme for his funeral; and that very day a beautiful sheet of paper, called rice-paper,—in whose composition rice is entirely foreign,—received Kin-Fo’s last will.
After having bequeathed his house in Shanghai to the young widow, and a portrait of the Taiping chief to Wang, which the philosopher had always looked upon with pleasure, and having done this without injury to the policy of the Centenary, Kin-Fo traced with a firm hand the order of march of the persons who were to attend the obsequies.
First, in default of relations, of which he had none, a party of friends, which he had, were to appear at the head of the cortége, dressed in white,—the color of mourning in China.
Through the streets, as far out as the country about the old tomb, a double row of servants, charged with the burial, would file. They would bear different symbols,—blue parasols, halberds, sceptres, silk screens, written documents with the details of the ceremony, and be dressed in a black tunic with a white belt, and wear a black felt cap with red aigrettes on their heads. Behind the first group of friends would walk a guide dressed in scarlet from head to foot, beating a gong, and preceding the portrait of the deceased, which would be lying in a sort of decorated shrine. Then a second group of friends would follow, whose part it is to faint at regular intervals on cushions prepared for the occasion. Finally, a last group of young men, screened under a blue and gold canopy, would strew the road with little pieces of white paper, pierced with a hole like sapeques, which were intended to lure away the evil spirits that might be tempted to join the funeral procession.
Then the catafalque would appear, an enormous palanquin hung in violet silk, and embroidered with gold dragons, which fifty valets would bear on their shoulders between a double row of bonzes. The priests, clad in robes of gray, red, or yellow, would follow, reciting prayers in the intervals between the thunder of gongs, the shrill tooting of flutes, and the noisy din of trumpets six feet long.
At last the mourners’ carriages draped in white would bring up the rear of this gorgeous procession, the expenses of which must exhaust the last resources of the opulent corpse.
There was really nothing extraordinary in this programme. Many funerals of this class pass through the streets of Canton, Shang-hai, or Pekin; and the Celestials see in them only a natural homage rendered to the remains of him who is no more.
On the 20th of October a box, expressed from Liao-Tcheou and addressed to Kin-Fo, reached his house at Shanghai. It contained the coffin he had ordered, which was carefully packed. Neither Wang, nor Soun, nor any of the servants in the yamen, felt any cause for surprise; for, we repeat, there is not a Chinaman who does not long to possess in his lifetime the bed in which he will be laid to rest for eternity.
This coffin—a chef-d’oeuvre from the manufactory of Liao-Tcheou—was placed in the “ancestors’ chamber.” There, after being brushed, waxed, and polished, it would usually, no doubt, have waited a long while for the day when the pupil of the philosopher Wang would have utilized it on his own account. It was not so ordained, however; for Kin-Fo’s days were numbered, and the hour was near that would add him to the list of his family ancestors. Indeed, this was the very evening when he had determined to die.
A letter had arrived that day from the afflicted Le-ou, who offered him the little that she possessed. Fortune was nothing to her: she could do without it. She loved him; and what did he wish more? Could they not be happy in more modest circumstances? This letter, which expressed the most sincere affection, did not modify Kin-Fo’s resolution.
“My death alone can enrich her,” he thought.
It now remained to decide where and how this last act should be performed; and Kin-Fo experienced a sort of pleasure in planning the details, for he hoped that at the last moment an emotion, however fleeting, would make his heart beat.
Within the enclosure of the yamen rose four pretty kiosks, ornamented in the fanciful manner characteristic of Chinese decorators. They bore significant names,—the Pavilion of Happiness, which Kin-Fo never entered; the Pavilion of Fortune, which he scorned; the Pavilion of Pleasure, whose gates had long been closed to him; and the Pavilion of Long Life, which he had resolved to destroy.
It was this last one that instinct led him to choose, and he resolved to shut himself up in it at nightfall; and it was there next day they would find him happy in death. This point being settled, in what manner should he die? Stab himself like a Japanese? strangle himself with a silken girdle like a mandarin? open his veins in a perfumed bath like an epicurean in ancient Rome? No: these methods would seem brutal, and painful to his friends and servants. One or two grains of opium mixed with a subtle poison would be sufficient to take him from this world to the next. While unconscious, perhaps, he would pass away in one of those dreams which convert slumber into eternal sleep.
The sun was already beginning to sink below the horizon, and Kin-Fo had only a few moments more to live. He wished to take a last walk, and see once more the country around Shanghai, and the shores of the Houang-Pou, on which he had so often walked away his ennui. Alone, without having even caught a glimpse of Wang that day, he left the yamen to return once more, and never leave it again.
He crossed the English territory, the little bridge over the creek, and the French concession, with an indolent step, which he did not care to hasten in this last hour. Passing along the wharf of the native port, he wound around the Shang-hai wall as far as the Roman-Catholic cathedral, whose cupola overlooks the southern portion of the country. Then he bore to the right, and quietly ascended the road to the pagoda at Loung-Hao.
Here was the vast flat country which extends to the shadowy heights which bound the valley of the Min. It was an immense swamp, which agricultural industry has converted into rice-fields. Here and there were a network of canals filled by the tide, and a few wretched villages in which the reed huts were cemented with yellowish mud; and two or three fields of wheat, banked up above reach of the water. The narrow paths were frequented by a large number of dogs and white goats, ducks and geese; and, whenever a pedestrian disturbed their sport, the former would scamper off on all fours, and the latter flap their wings and fly away.
This richly cultivated country, whose aspect could not astonish a native, would, however, have attracted the attention of a stranger, and perhaps repelled him; for everywhere were seen coffins by the hundreds, to say nothing of the mounds whose turf covered the dead buried at last forever. One saw only piles of oblong boxes, and pyramids of biers in layers, like planks in a shipbuilder’s yard; for the Chinese plain on the outskirts of the towns is only a vast cemetery, where the dead, as well as the living, encumber the ground. It is asserted that the burial of these coffins is forbidden so long as one dynasty occupies the throne of the Son of Heaven; and these dynasties last centuries. Whether the prohibition be true or not, it is a fact that corpses, lying in their coffins,—some of which are painted in bright colors, some sombre and modest,