| One day a man walked into a courtyard to find a black fox in a drunken
sleep there. His first impulse was to go up and catch it, then it
occurred to him that foxes can help one get rich. So he covered the
fox with a piece of clothing and sat down to keep watch. Waking up,
the fox stretched its limbs and in an instant changed back to human form.
Grateful to the man for watching over it, the fox became his friend and
brought him presents occasionally. One day the man asked the fox,
“If someone hides himself in your house, can you make him invisible?”
The fox said it could. “Can you attach your spirit to someone and
make him run swiftly?” Again, the fox answered in the positive. The
man then came out with his request. “My family is so poor that we
can’t make ends meet, even with your gifts. Moreover, I am reluctant
to trouble you so often. My fellow villager, Huang, is a very rich
man extremely afraid of getting involved in lawsuits. He is said
to be looking for a kitchen maid, and I decide to let my wife try to get
the job. A few days afterward she will find a chance to run away
and hide herself in your house. Then I will threaten to sue Huang,
as it is in his house that my wife is found missing. My wife is rather
good looking, so I can accuse him of abducting her because of her good
looks and force him to pay me a large sum of money. After I get the
money, you can attach your spirit to her, make her run into Huang’s cottage,
and allow her to be discovered there. If you can do all this for
me, I shall be most grateful.” With the fox carrying out the plan
accordingly, the man succeeded in extorting money form Huang. Even
after the man’s wife returned home, Huang dared not look further into the
matter as she had been found in his cottage.
The woman, however, was unable to recover from her demented state.
She spent all day putting on make-up, and at night she seemed to be joking
and flirting with someone but would not let her husband approach her.
The man hurried over to seek help from the fox. Puzzled, the fox
went away to take a look. In a short moment it came running back
and stamped it’s feet in distress. “What rotten luck! That
is the fox that lives upstairs in Huang’s house. He must have had
his eye on your wife, for the moment my spirit took leave of her body,
he seized the chance to attach himself to her. As I am no match for
that fox, there’s nothing I can do to help you.” When the man went
on importuning, the fox’s face fell. “Suppose so-and-so in your village,
who is a fierce as a tiger, has taken somebody’s wife by force. Would
you be able to stand up for that poor man?” The woman’s condition
went from bad to worse. In great detail she described to others how
her husband had used her to extort money. Doctors and magicians invited
to treat her were at a loss as to what to do, and she finally died of exhaustion.
The villagers all agreed that the man’s scheme had appeared to be flawless,
for he was as Wiley as a ghost and had a fox to abet him. Yet the
assistance of a friendly fox roused the ill intention of another, so the
man ended up like the proverbial mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of
the oriole behind. It is written in an ancient poem, “As profit has
a dagger leaning on it, so a greedy man will inflict harm on himself.”
How precisely true!
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