At this unexpected proposition, Wang did not even shudder. But Kin-Fo, who looked steadily into his face, saw a gleam in his eyes. Was the old Tai-ping awakening? Did he feel no hesitation at this charge which his pupil was about to lay on him? Could eighteen years, then, have passed over his head without stifling the sanguinary instincts of his youth? He did not even make an objection to doing this to the son of the man who had been charitable to him. He would agree, without flinching, to deliver him from the existence he no longer desired. He would do this, he, Wang the philosopher.

      But this peculiar light almost immediately died out of his eyes; and his face, though rather more serious, now looked like that of a worthy man as usual.

      “Is that the service you ask of me?” he said, resuming his seat.

      “Yes,” answered Kin-Fo; “and this service will acquit you of all you may imagine you owe Tchoung-Heou and his son.”

      “What do you require of me?” simply asked the philosopher.

      “On the 25th of June,—the twenty-eighth day of the sixth moon, you understand, Wang,—the day which will complete my thirty-first year,—I shall have ceased to live. I must fall by your hand; and the blow may be given in my face or in my back, in the daytime or night,—no matter where, no matter how,—standing or sitting, sleeping or awake,—and I be sent to my rest by shot or poison. In each of the eighty thousand minutes which will remain to me of life for fifty-five days yet, I must be filled with the thought, and I hope with the fear, that my life is to suddenly end. I must have before me those eighty thousand emotions, so that, when the seven elements of my soul separate, I can cry out, ‘At last I have lived!’”

      Kin-Fo, contrary to his habit, had spoken with decided animation; and it will also be observed that he had appointed as the extreme limit of his existence the sixth day before the expiration of his policy. This was acting like a prudent man; for, in default of payment of a new premium, a delay would cause his heirs to lose the insurance.

      The philosopher listened gravely, casting a quick, stealthy look at the portrait of the Tai-ping chief which ornamented his room,—a portrait which was to fall to him, though he was not aware of it.

      “You will not shrink from the obligation you will take upon yourself of killing me?” asked Kin-Fo.

      Wang, with a gesture, asserted that he had not yet become so feeble-hearted: he had seen too much when fighting under the banners of the Taiping. “But,” he added, wishing to exhaust every objection before pledging himself, “do you wish to renounce the chances that the True Master has accorded you to reach extreme old age?”

      “I renounce them.”

      “Without regret?”

      “Without regret,” replied Kin-Fo. “Live to be old! To resemble some piece of wood which can no longer be carved! No, indeed! Nor do I desire to be rich, and still less to be poor.”

      “And the young widow at Pekin?” asked Wang. “Do you forget the saying, ‘Flowers with flowers, and the willow with the willow: the union of two hearts makes a hundred years of spring’?”

      “Against three hundred years of autumn, summer, and winter,” replied Kin-Fo, shrugging his shoulders. “No: if Le-ou were poor, she would be wretched with me; but now my death will insure her a fortune.”

      “Have you done that?”

      “Yes. And you, Wang, have fifty thousand dollars placed on my head.”

      “Ah!” said the philosopher quietly, “you have an answer for every question.”

      “For every thing, even to an objection that you have not yet made.”

      “What is it?”

      “Why, the danger that you may incur after my death of being pursued as an assassin.”

      “Oh!” said Wang, “they are only blunderers or rogues who let themselves be caught. Besides, what merit would there be in rendering you this last service if I risked nothing?”

      “None at all, Wang. I prefer to give you every security as to that, and no one will think of disturbing you.”

      And, saying this, Kin-Fo approached a table, took up a sheet of paper, and, in a clear, plain hand, wrote the following lines:—

      “I have voluntarily taken my own life, through disgust and weariness of life.”

      Then he gave the paper to Wang.

      The philosopher read it in a low voice at first, then aloud, after which he folded it carefully, and put it in a memorandum-book which he always carried about him.

      Another gleam came into his eyes.

      “Is all this serious on your part?” he asked, looking fixedly at his pupil.

      “Very serious.”

      “It will be none the less so on mine.”

      “I have your word?”

      “You have.”

      “Then before the 25th of June, at the latest, I shall have lived?”

      “I do not know if you will have lived in the sense you mean,” answered the philosopher gravely; “but you will surely be dead.”

      “Thank you, and farewell, Wang!”

      “Farewell, Kin-Fo!”

      Thereupon Kin-Fo quietly left the philosopher’s room.