in her heart, for it was her song they were playing, the song she had composed for the Emperor on their first rapturous night together. Ming Huang, too, was stirred by exquisite emotions. He watched her in adoration. He thought of the glory of her body, so soft and warm and fragrant, her cherry lips that he yearned to bite, the liquid wonder of her eyes in which a man might drown deliciously, but above all he remembered the slender grace of her dancing, of her habit of letting her garments slip so that one small rounded breast showed for a moment. A eunuch brought him wine and he drank feverishly.
All the austere yesterdays were forgotten, like flowers bloomed and gone, or weeds flung from a garden. While he had Yang Kuei-fei, there was no place in Changan for sadness or despair.
On Yang Kuei-fei's birthday, the junior department of the Pear Garden played "Fragrance of the Lichees." Afterwards there were dancing horses, followed by a sumptuous feast attended by court officials, poets and other men of cultivated personalities who dwelt in Changan. She was showered with gifts and jewels, gold and silver, bronze, diamonds, jade, amber and lapis lazuli. But the thing she prized most was a copper mirror, the personal gift of the Emperor, of sea horses and grape design while the outer border was decorated with butterflies. It was made of an alloy of copper and tin, and had been buried in the soil of Loyang until it was like silver. The soil of Loyang is famous for its feng-shui.
Afterwards the mirror had been removed, freed of
