The unblinking stare in Baltazar’s great grey eyes and the obstinate set of his lips—signs of purpose which Quong Ho for eight years had learned to gauge with infallible precision—caused him to quake excessively. Not only was his servitude to Baltazar a matter of oath, but a return before the completion of the special education which would enable him to take immediate rank in New China, would be the death-blow to his ambitions. So Quong Ho took to heart the precepts of the Humble Mind and swore to outdo the Sacred Apes of Japan, even as his master had ordained. After this, in the first days of their Thebaïd, master and man held frequent conversations on the relations with the outside world which the former had prescribed. The three years, said Baltazar, which lay before them in the solitude of the wilderness, were for the maceration of the flesh, the pursuit of virtue and the cultivation of the intellect. He illustrated his argument with countless quotations from the Chinese classics. “In this fashion, Quong Ho,” said he, “you are drinking of the _Five Sources of Happiness_. To wit: _Long Life_: for here, in this unpolluted atmosphere, you are acquiring physical health. _Riches_: they will be yours in no matter what University of Modern China you go as Professor of Mathematics. _Soundness of Body and Serenity of Mind_: the Latins put the idea into epigrammatic form—Mens sano in corpore sano; what can be more conducive to serenity of mind than this studious solitude, undisturbed by material cares? _The Love of Virtue_: we have every hour of all our days to acquire it. _Fulfilling to the end the_ WILL; is it not the WILL that has set us here?” “Indubitably,” said Quong Ho. “Hearken again,” said Baltazar, “to the _Six Extreme Evils. Misfortune shortening the Life_: from that no man is exempt—but from it no men are more than we protected. _Sickness_: likewise—but I have a box of simple remedies, and if the worst comes, there is a man learned in physic at Water-End. _Distress of Mind_: if our minds in these ideal surroundings are so unstable as to be distressed, we are unworthy of the name of philosophers. _Poverty_: I have an ample fortune. _Wickedness_: we, who are Seekers after Truth, have deliberately set ourselves beyond the reach of Temptation. _Weakness_: that, O Quong Ho, is the only danger. You must be on your guard against it night and day, especially on the days when necessity exposes you to the manifold temptations of that microcosm of Babylon, Pekin and San Francisco which goes by the name of Water-End.”