Wu-niang has meanwhile reached the capital. She enters a Buddhist temple where she is asked to sing by two clowns who pretend to be mandarins. The long series of misfortunes that has followed her consistently does not forsake her at this point—the two clowns simply make sport of her and pay her nothing. After her disappointment she unrolls the pictures of her parents-in-law to render homage before them and to pray to Heaven that she may find her husband. At this very moment Tsai-yung enters to pray for a safe journey for his parents. The bonze asks Wu-niang to leave and to make room for the great man. She forgets the pictures in her haste, and Tsai-yung carries off the scroll without having looked at it closely. But Wu-niang recognizes him and makes inquiries in regard to his residence. In this whole scene there is, as in many Chinese plays, a great deal of satire on Buddhist priests. One priest while saying a prayer is corrected by the abbot for mispronouncing one of the Sanskrit names for Buddha, Po-lo-t’ang instead of Po-lo-mi. The ignorant priest retorts, “Well, ‘_t’ang_’ is sugar and ‘_mi_’ is honey; both are sweet, so what difference does it make?” An Occidental parallel for this scene would be the medieval priest who baptized, “In nomine patriae, filiae, et spiritus sanctae.” Wu-niang goes to her husband’s house as a mendicant nun and meets Niu-hsi. In a scene which the Chinese commentators consider the best in the play she gradually tells her story and reveals her identity to her husband’s second wife. Niu-hsi is touched by the filial piety of Wu-niang, calls her sister, and asks her to live with them. First she advises her how to reveal herself to her husband, namely by writing him a letter and placing it on his table in the library where he will be sure to find it. When Tsai-yung comes home he reads in the “Book of Annals”, a collection of historical illustrations selected by Confucius to give point to his moral teachings. In every passage he finds a rebuke for his lack of filial piety, and when he finds Wu-niang’s letter with the picture of his parents in their famished condition this means to him a greater reproof still. He begins to suspect that the messenger with the letter from his father had been an impostor. His wife’s letter contains nothing but hidden allusions to his actions. Among ancient examples quoted there is mention of one man to whom an emperor had offered his daughter but who had refused to degrade his wife to the rank of a concubine, and of another who had under similar circumstances repudiated his wife. Niu-hsi asks him whose conduct he approves of and he says the former’s, of course. Then she asks whether, if his first wife were to step before him now clad in rags, he would not blush with shame and repudiate her? He answers that he would not, that he considers his marriage indissoluble. When Wu-niang appears and tells him her story he feels deep shame because an ironic fate had led him to serve his emperor