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g's Mirror of History, though stylistically very fine, lack the touch of genius. Not until our great Qing era, with the appearance of this magnificent Epitome of Ming History from the brush of your late son, has there been anything to bear comparison with those great works of the past. Hence the coining of this new expression—the Four Great Historians, Zuo, Ma, Ban, and Zhuang.' By now Zhuang was beaming. Too kind, too kind,' he said, pumping his clasped hands in courteous deprecation. 'But the Treasure of Huzhou, you know— that I cannot allow.' 'Why ever not?' Wu replied with a perfectly straight face. There's even a rhyme going the rounds now which says so: Brushes, silk, and a book Are Huzhou's treasures three. And the greatest one among them Is Zhuang's History.' Silk and writing-brushes were in fact the two products for which Huzhou was famous. For all that he was a vulgar philistine, Wu was gifted with a certain verbal dexterity and his neat coupling of 'Zhuang's History' with 'Hu brushes' and 'Hu silk', as they were called, had the desired effect of making Zhuang even more delighted. Wu pressed on. 'I arrived here to take up the magistracy in this area with a clean slate, Mr Zhuang, and I am leaving it no richer than I came. Let me be bold. My real reason for visiting you today was to beg a copy of the Ming History. It would become an heirloom in our family. My sons and grandsons would read and study it day and night. It would improve their minds. It would enable them to get the sort of jobs that would make them a credit to their ancestors. And all that would be thanks to your generous gift.' 'You shall have a copy, of course,' said Zhuang g cheap christian louboutin raciously. Wu added a few politenesses, but since his host showed no sign of wanting to move, he was obliged to fall back on further eulogies of the Ming History. In point of fact he hadn't read a single page of it and his eloquent comments on the book's amazing historical genius, superb command of material, et cetera, et cetera, were a farrago of wholly irrelevant babble. shoes christian louboutin Zhuang at last got up. 'Make yourself comfortable, will you, Mr Wu, while I leave you for a moment,' he said, and retreated to an inner room. After a long wait, a servant came in with a large cloth-wrapped bundle, set it down on the table and went out again. Since there was no sign of Zhuang returning, Wu quickly lifted the bundle from the table and tested it for weight. In spite of its bulk, it was light as a feather and could not, he concluded with dismay, contain any silver. After he had waited a little longer, Zhuang came in again, ceremoniously picked up the bundle from the table with both hands and smilingly presented it to his guest. 'Since you have shown your appreciation of our Huzhou products, Mr Wu, allow me to present you with this sample.' Wu thanked him and took his leave. On his way back to the inn where he was staying he slipped his hand inside the bundle and felt around. The contents turned out to be a book, a hank of raw silk, and a few dozen writing-brushes. So all that ingenious talk which he had hoped would bring him not only the book but several hundred taels to go with it had been wasted! That brilliant bit about 'Huzhou's treasures three' which he had invented on the spur of the moment had been taken literally and Zhuang had, though not in the sense he intended, given him what he asked for. 'Damnation!' he thought. 'Whatever possessed me to say that? They're all so mean, these Nanxun millionaires. If only I'd told him that the three treasures of Huzhou were gold, silver, and the Ming History, I might have made quite a haul.' He reached the inn in a thoroughly bad temper, dumped the bundle on the table, threw himself down on the bed, and was soon asleep. When he woke up it was already dark. The inn had long since ceased serving supper, but h christian louboutin shoes sale e didn't feel he could afford to order a s Louboutin UK eparate meal. What with the pangs of hunger and anxiety about his predicament, there seemed little prospect of his getting to sleep again. To pass the time he took the Epitome from the bundle, opened it up, and began to read. After he had read a few pages, he thought he could see the glint of gold. He turned over the page and there, shining before him, was a whole sheet of gold leaf. His heart pounded with excitement. Could it be? He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Yes, it was gold all right. He picked up each volume in turn and shook it wildly. From each of them sheets of gold leaf dropped out, ten in all. Each sheet, he calculated, must weigh at least five pennyweights. That meant a total of five taels of gold. The relative value of gold to silver at that time was eighty to one, so five taels of gold represented four hundred taels of silver. Wu's joy knew no bounds. That Zhuang's a crafty old devil, ' he thought. 'He was afraid that once I'd got him to give me a copy of the book, I might throw it aside and forget it without even looking at the contents. He put these sheets of gold leaf inside this copy of his son's book to make sure that only the first person who actually read it should have them. All right, then. I'll read two or three more chapters, and when I call round tomorrow to thank him for the gold, I'll r louboutin uk ecite a few passages from memory and tell him how wonderful they are. 7nen—who knows?—he might cough up a whole lot more.' At once he trimmed the lamp, opened the book again and began reading aloud to himself from the text. On and on he droned until suddenly—he had just reached the year 1616—his heart missed a beat. It was the year in which the Manchu Nurhachi proclaimed himself First Emperor of the Later Jin dynasty, but here in the book it was referred to as 'the forty-fourth year of the Ming Emperor Wan Li'. He read swiftly on. Here it was again: the year 1627 w christian louboutin london hen Abahai succeeded Nurhachi as Emperor of Later Jin was referred to as 'the seventh year of the Ming Emperor Tian Qi'; 1636, when Abahai changed the name of the Manchu dynasty from 'Later Jin' to 'Qing', was given as 'the ninth year of the Ming Emperor Chong Zhen'; 1645 was called 'the firstyear of Long Wu', and 1647 'the first year of Yong Li'. ('Long Wu' and 'Yong Li' were the reign-titles of Prince Tang and Prince Gui, Ming Princes who set up shortlived regimes in the South after the Manchus had established themselves in Peking.) It was patently obvious that the author of the book had followed Ming Court practice throughout for his dates, totally disregarding the existence of the Manchus. Wu hit the table with a mighty thump and involuntarily let out a shout. 'But this is treason! This is outrageous!'