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The prison governor knew the wealth of the monastery. He smiled: "My price is a hundred ounces for myself, and two hundred for my men." The Superior made a grimace, but was compelled to promise this larger sum. The warders consulted with each other, and finally, when night came, led the Superior and three of his bonzes back to the monastery.
Behind us is the great open temple, where the bonzes officiate to the accompaniment of sacred bells and wooden clappers, looking, from where we sit, more like puppets than anything else, some squatting in rows like peaceful mummies, others executing rhythmical marches before the golden background where stand the gods.
Chance has favored us with a friendship as singular as it is rare: that of the head bonzes of the temple of the Jumping Tortoise, where we had witnessed last month such a surprising pilgrimage.
When Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary, first saw the Chinese bonzes, tonsured and using their rosaries, he cried out, "There is not a single article of dress, or a sacerdotal function, or a single ceremony of the Romish church, which the Devil has not imitated in this country." I have not the courage to follow this streamlet back into the devil's heart. The attempt would be too daring.
However much exalted bonzes and eminent Taoist priests might do penance, they wouldn't succeed in releasing my soul from suffering; for it would still be needful for you to clearly explain the facts, so that I might at last be able to come to life." After lending him a patient ear, Tai-yue suddenly banished from her memory all recollection of the occurrences of the previous night.
Five questions were by his orders propounded to the vice-provincial of the Jesuits: 'Why and by what authority he and his fellow propagandists had constrained Japanese subjects to become Christians? Why they had induced their disciples and their sectaries to overthrow temples? Why they persecuted the bonzes? Why they and other Portuguese ate animals useful to men, such as oxen and cows?
Several of the daimios were converted to the new faith, and Nobunaga, who hated and strove to exterminate the Buddhists, received the Christians with the greatest favor, gave them desirable sites for their churches, and sought to set them up as a foil to the arrogance of the bonzes.
This hater and scourge of the Buddhist priesthood openly welcomed and patronized the Christians, and gave them eligible sites on which to build dwellings and churches. In every possible way he employed the new force, which he found pliantly political, as well as intellectually and morally a choice weapon for humbling the bonzes, whom he hated as serpents.
Now the women were young and sound: the bonzes were strong and vigorous. They had, moreover, taken the precaution to cause certain special pills to be administered to their visitors. Consequently it but rarely happened that these prayers were not heard.
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