Chance?

On my honour, I don't know if he is a Chinaman or not. He calls himself Ching Chang, which means "Purity and Stillness" and he says that he is really Ko Hsuan, that crazy drunken miracle-worker of the third century who upset all China with his weird practices and astounding feats, who said he was "Holy beyond Utterance" and lived for seven years in a pig-stye, as a pig does in every way, to prove it!

But even if I knew, I shall not give the least hint of his name or his address, both because he has put "the Curse of Chwangtze" on me if I do, and because I should certainly never see him again if I did.

He is by long odds the most curious man in New York. I got to him by bribing his chief disciple, a lantern-jawed person with gold teeth, and a scolding housemaid from the Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, for a wife. The disciple aforesaid is a Puritan from Wales; even a dollar does not make him smile, but the intuitive may guess that he experiences some interior satisfaction. He is the habitual butt of Ching Chang, but never notices it. The old man himself is one vast silence of Laughter—I really don't know how else to put it.

I found him squatted on a great divan of dull gold embroidery, dressed in an enormous robe of the most brilliant blue, with golden symbols inked in thread all over it. He is entirely bald, although still young. His face reminded me a little of the great Napoleon, but more of Ho Tai, that smiling god with the huge abdomen whose image one sees in all the Chinese Shops. His eyes, though, are amazing. They glint unutterable Evil, the joy of a Devil gloating over the souls that he has lured to damnation. Yet there is no cruelty in his smile; one would say that even Eternal Punishment seems to him but one more Joke.

[407]