North of Pingyang the Fan river has a waste garden, long known for its foxes. A scholar named Ning, of a scrupulous and unsociable disposition, was in his books all day. One hot month, stifled, he wanted to borrow a pavilion in the garden to rest in. A friend tried to stop him.
Ning laughed and said: “What harm is there? What a fox uses to seduce people is two things: to the lecherous it seduces with beauty, to the greedy it seduces with gold. I want neither. What I want is the books on my shelf. However cunning the seduction, it will not sell to me.”
His friend answered vaguely and left.
After a meal Ning lay down under the north window, and saw a woman come out from behind a screen. He knew she was a fox and pretended to sleep to watch her. The woman pointed at the books on the shelf and smiled: “There is pleasure to be found within the teaching of names. This boy has studied alone and seen little; he will die of diligence.”
Ning got up and cursed her: “Wild vixen! Drag your tail and be off. How dare you talk such nonsense!”
She cursed him back: “Field slave! Am I talking nonsense? If you have truly read and understood, you should know my family’s ancestral virtue and ancestral merit. How dare you slander it?”
Ning said: “Occupying a city and working mischief, borrowing a tiger’s authority — that is your sort’s stock trick. Where are these ancestral virtues and merits?”
She said: “You read every day, and have you not heard of the Great Yu’s marrying the daughter of Tu Shan? Suisui pangpang, the capital was built — that is ancestral virtue. At the end of the Shang we moved house to the Western Sea. When King Wen was imprisoned at Youli, Sanyisheng came to my humble dwelling to seek the former worthies, and was given a qinghan to release him. Such dazzling ancestral merit, recorded in the histories — how is it that you have not looked into it more deeply?”
Ning said: “That is true enough. But you light lamps and play tricks, and take your lechery to the bed; in the end you are not good stock.”
She said: “In death there is right and there is wickedness, and the great sage still envied its benevolence; in the earth it knows rain, and the Han Confucians still respected its wisdom. And with nine tails its virtue comes when it is complete, as the Classic of Mountains and Seas states exactly. You have truly read without getting the drift.”
Ning thought hard for a long while, then respectfully saluted her and said: “At first I took you for unworthy of mention; now I have heard your great argument, I am willing to be a friend in books.”
She smiled and agreed. From then on they wrote together at dawn and at dusk, and collated texts side by side. Sitting one day in the lotus pavilion and looking at the Zhouyi, she suddenly asked: “What is the meaning of the chapter on there being heaven and earth?”
Ning said: “Above it speaks of li, which is beauty; beauty within means the intercourse of male and female, and it is right to receive it with xian. But xian cannot be spoken of as receiving, so it goes on from heaven and earth to the way of husband and wife, and receives it with heng.”
She smiled and said: “Then is the intercourse of male and female something the sage is reluctant to speak of?”
Ning said: “It is.”
She said: “And what of the male and female joining their essence and the myriad things being transformed and born?”
With that her starry eyes slanted at him and her apricot cheeks reddened slightly. Ning’s spirit shook and his will was carried away, and he answered: “Do you have any intention? Let us consult the Yi.”
The woman casually divined and got weiji. Ning said: “Weiji foretells ill; the matter will not succeed.”
She said: “The little fox wets its tail; though it is not in its proper place, the hard and the soft answer each other. What harm?”
Ning was beguiled, and from then on they slept together. Within half a month his spirit was exhausted and he could hardly stand. A friend came by and questioned him, and Ning concealed it in a hundred ways.
At night the woman came, and Ning told her he was ill. She said: “You are writing hard, so you grow thin daily. Wen Yuan was always ill — how do you know it was not from the Book of Fengshan? Otherwise, how could he have got the wasting sickness when the consort of Maoling was not yet betrothed?”
Ning deeply believed her, and abandoned his inkstone and pencil, and sat all day in one room with the woman. After another month his illness deepened and he lay groaning on the bed. The friend came again, and Ning gradually told him the truth.
The friend sighed: “You have been struck by the highest strategy of seduction. To seduce with beauty — when the beauty fades the love slackens; to seduce with gold — when the gold is gone the friendship ends. But to steal the conduct of a gentleman outwardly while sowing the deceit of a petty man inwardly, choosing what you love and feeding it to you — the art of seduction changes, and the poison of seduction grows.”
Ning was terrified and saw his error. The friend hurriedly called for a carrying chair and moved him home by starlight, and the woman never came again. Half a year later Ning died of consumption. His books were scattered and lost, and cannot be traced afterwards.
The Duo comment: “This is a single mirror for the heart of every guest at a great gate. How many alms bowls in the world it breaks; and that too is the great fault of our kind.”
