And she began to cry. But then she was always crying. When she was born her father and mother named her Bright Yellow Butterfly Floating In The Sunshine, but she cried so much that by the time she was five years old they saw that name wouldn’t do at all, and changed it to Autumn Cloud Pouring Down Rain Upon The Sad Gray Sea.

She cried about anything. If her Lady-In-Waiting brought her a bowl of tea with honeysuckle blossoms in it, she would cry because they weren’t jasmine flowers. If they were jasmine, she would cry because they weren’t honeysuckle. When the peach trees bloomed she would cry because that meant that spring had come, and that meant summer would soon follow, and then autumn, and then the cold winter. “And oh, how cold the wind will be then, and how fast the snow will fall!” sobbed Princess Autumn Cloud, looking through her tears at the bright pink peach blossoms.

She cried because her sea-green jacket was embroidered with storks instead of bamboo trees.

She cried because they brought her shark-fin soup in a bowl of green lacquer with a gold dragon twisting around it, instead of a red lacquer bowl with a silver dragon.

She cried if the weather was hot.

She cried if the weather was cold.

And hardest of all she cried whenever the Little Emperor was naughty.

Whenever she began to cry a Lady-In-Waiting knelt in front of her and caught her tears in a golden bowl, for it never would have done to let them run down her cheeks, like an ordinary person’s tears; they would have washed such deep roads through the thick white powder on her face. Every morning Princess Autumn Cloud (and, indeed, every lady in the Court of the Little Emperor) covered her face with honey in which white jasmine petals had been crushed to make it smell sweet, then when she was all sticky she put on powder until her face was as white as an egg. Then she painted on very surprised-looking black eyebrows and a little mouth as red and round as a blob of sealing wax. It looked just as if her mouth were an important letter that had to be sealed up to keep all sorts of secrets from escaping. Princess Autumn Cloud and Princess Gentle Breeze and Lady Gleaming Dragon Fly and Lady Moon Seen Through The Mist and all the rest of them would have thought it as shocking to appear without paint and powder covering up their faces as they would have thought it to appear without any clothes.

So Princess Autumn Cloud leaned over as if she were making a deep bow, and let her tears fall in a golden bowl, and then, because they were Royal tears, they were poured into beautiful porcelain bottles that were sealed up and placed, rows and rows and rows of them, in a room all hung with silk curtains embroidered with weeping willows.

“Oh, what shall be done to amuse the Little Emperor?” sobbed Princess Autumn Cloud. “Perhaps he would like some music!” And she clapped her hands, with their long, long fingernails covered with gold fingernail protectors.

So four fat musicians, dressed in vermilion silk and wearing big horn-rimmed spectacles to show how wise they were, came and kowtowed to the Little Emperor. That is, they got down on their knees, which was hard for them to do because they were so fat, and then, all together, knocked their heads on the floor nine times apiece to show their deep respect.

Then one beat on a drum, boom boom, and one clashed cymbals of brass together, crash bang, and one rang little bells of green and milk-white jade, and the oldest and fattest beat with mallets up and down the back of a musical instrument carved and painted to look like a life-sized tiger with glaring eyes and sharp white teeth.

The Little Emperor sprawled back in his big dragon throne under the softly waving peacock feather fans, stretched out his arms and legs, and yawned harder than ever.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! What shall be done to amuse him?” wailed Princess Autumn Cloud, bursting into tears afresh. “Can no one suggest anything?”

And although the Mandarins and the Court Ladies thought to themselves that what they would really like to suggest for such a spoiled little boy would be to send him to bed without his supper, they none of them dared say so, but tried to look very solemn and sympathetic.

“Would the Little Old Ancestor enjoy some sweetmeats?” suggested Lady Lotus Blossom. “Old Ancestor” is what you call the Emperor if you are properly brought up, and polite, and Chinese.

So Gentlemen-In-Waiting came and kowtowed and offered the Little Emperor lacquered boxes of crystallized ginger, of sugared sunflower seeds, and of litchi nuts. But do you think he was interested? Not at all. He would not even look at them.

“The wind is blowing hard. Would it amuse the Little Old Ancestor to watch the kites fly?” asked old Lord Mighty Swishing Dragon’s Tail.

The Little Emperor didn’t know whether it would or not. However, he couldn’t be more bored than he was already, so he climbed down from his throne and went out into the windy autumn garden.

First marched the musicians, beating on drums to let every one know that the Emperor was coming.

Then came the Court Ladies tottering along on their “golden lilies,” which is what they call their tiny feet that have been bound up tightly to keep them small ever since the ladies were babies.

Then the Mandarins with their long pigtails and their padded silk coats whose big sleeves held fans and tobacco and bags of betel nuts and sheets of pale green and vermilion writing paper.

Then Princess Autumn Cloud in a jade green gown embroidered with a hundred lilac butterflies, a lilac jacket, and pale rose-colored trousers tied with lilac ribbons. In her ears, around her arms, and on her fingers were jade and pearls, and her rose-colored shoes were trimmed with tassels of pearls and were so tiny that she could hardly hobble. In her shiny black hair she wore on one side a big peony, the petals made of mother-of-pearl and the leaves of jade. Each petal and leaf was on a fine wire so that when she moved her head they trembled as real flowers do when the wind blows over them. On the other side were two jade butterflies that trembled too. In front of her, walking backward, went her Lady-In-Waiting holding the golden tear bowl, in case the Princess should suddenly begin to cry.

And last of all, surrounded by his Gentlemen-In-Waiting, came the Little Emperor, dressed from head to foot in yellow, the Imperial color, so that he looked like a yellow baby duckling. And as he came every one in the Palace and in the Garden had to stop whatever they were doing—gossiping, teasing the Royal monkeys, chewing betel nuts, or sweeping up dead leaves—and kneel down and knock their heads on the ground until he had passed.

How the wind was blowing! It sent the willow branches streaming, it wrinkled the lake water and turned the lotus leaves wrong side out, it scattered the petals of the chrysanthemums. It tossed the kites high in the air. How brightly their colors shone against the gray sky! Some were made to look like pink and yellow melons with trailing leaves, some were like warriors in vermilion, some were golden fish, others were black bats, and the biggest one of all was a great blue-green dragon.

As for the Little Emperor, he took one look at them and then yawned so hard that they were afraid he would dislocate his jaw.

A little brown bird the color of a dead leaf had been hopping about on the ground under the chrysanthemums looking for something for its supper, and now suddenly flew up into a willow tree and began to sing.

The Little Emperor clapped his hands, and all his servants dropped on their knees and began to kowtow.

“Catch me that little brown bird with the beautiful song!” he said. He stopped yawning, and his eyes grew bright with eagerness.

“But, Little Old Ancestor, that is such a plain little bird,” said his aunt timidly. “Surely you would rather have a cockatoo as pink as a cloud at dawn, or a pair of lovebirds as green as leaves in spring——”

The rude Little Emperor paid not the slightest attention to her, but stamped his foot and shouted:

“Catch me that little brown bird!”

So his servants chased the poor little fluttering bird with butterfly nets. The wind whipped their bright silk skirts, and their pigtails streamed out behind, and they puffed and panted, for they were most of them very fat.

And at last the bird was caught, and put in a cage trimmed with tassels of purple silk and pearls, with drinking cup and seed cup made like the halves of plums from purple amethysts on brown amber twigs with green jade leaves.

For a time the Little Emperor was delighted with his new pet, and every day he carried it in its cage when he went for a walk. But it never sang, only beat against the bars of its cage, or huddled on its perch, so presently he grew tired of it, and it was hung up in its cage in a dark corner of one of the Palace rooms, where he soon forgot all about it.

How could the little bird sing? It was sick for the wide blue roads of the air, for wet green rice fields where the coolies stand with bare legs, sky-blue shirts, and bamboo hats as big as umbrellas, for the yellow rivers, and the mountains bright with red lilies. How could it sing in a cage? But sometimes it tried to cry to them: “Let me out! Please, please let me out! I have never done anything to harm you! I am so unhappy I think my heart is breaking! Please let me go free!”

“What a sweet song!” everybody would say. “Run and tell the Little Emperor that his bird is singing again.”

After a while the little bird realized that they did not understand, and it tried no longer, but drooped, dull-eyed and silent, in its cage.

One night the Little Emperor had a dream. Perhaps you won’t wonder when I tell you what he had for supper.

First he had tea in a bowl of jade as round and white as the moon, heaped up with honeysuckle flowers.

Then, in yellow lacquer boxes, sugared seeds, sunflower and lotus flower and watermelon seeds, boiled walnuts, and lotus buds.

Then velvety golden peaches and purple plums with a bloom of silver on them.

Pork cooked in eleven different ways: chopped, cold, with red beans and with white beans, with bamboo shoots, with onions, and with cherries, with eggs, with mushrooms, with cabbage, and with turnips.

Ducks and chickens stuffed with pine needles and roasted.

Smoked fish.

Shrimps and crabs, fried together.

Shark fins.

Boiled birds’ nests.

Porridge of tiny yellow seeds like bird seed.

Cakes in the shapes of seashells, fish, dragons, butterflies, and flowers.

Chrysanthemum soup, steaming in a yellow bowl with a green dragon twisting around it.

Not one other thing did that poor Little Emperor have for his supper!

When he was so full that he couldn’t hold anything more, not even one sugared watermelon seed, they took off his silk napkin embroidered with little brown monkeys eating pink and orange persimmons. He was so sleepy that he did not even stamp his feet when they washed his face and hands. Then they took off his red silk gown embroidered with gold dragons and blue clouds and lined with soft gray fur, his yellow silk shirt and his red satin shoes with their thick white soles. But he went to bed in his pale yellow pantaloons, tied around the ankles with rose-colored ribbons.

I must tell you about his bed. It was made of brick, and inside of it a small fire was built to keep the Little Emperor warm. On top of this three yellow silk mattresses were placed, then silk sheets, red, yellow, green, blue, and violet, then a coverlet of yellow satin embroidered with stars. Under his head were pillows stuffed with tea leaves; and above him was a canopy of yellow silk, embroidered with a great round moon whose golden rays streamed down the yellow silk curtains drawn around him.

He fell asleep, and this is what he dreamed.

The long golden rays seemed to turn into the bars of a cage. Yes, he was in a huge cage! He tried frantically to get out! He beat against the bars! Then he saw what looked like the roots of trees, and brown tree trunks, a grove all around the cage. But the trees moved and stepped about, and, looking up the trunks, instead of leaves he saw feathers, and still farther, sharp beaks, and then bright eyes looking at him. They were birds!

What he had thought were the roots of trees were their claws, and the trunks of the trees were their legs. But what enormous birds! They were as big as men, while he was as small as a bird.

“Let me out!” he shouted. “Don’t you know I am the Emperor, and every one must obey me? Let me out, I say!”

“Ah, he is beginning to sing,” said one bird to another.

“Not a very musical song. Too shrill by far! Take my advice, wring his neck and roast him. He would make a tender, juicy morsel for our supper.”

“Oh, let me out! Please, please let me out!” cried the poor Little Emperor in terror.

“He is singing more sweetly now,” remarked one of the birds.

“Too loud! Quite ear-splitting!” said a lady bird, fluffing out her breast feathers and lifting her wings to show how sensitive she was.

“If he were mine I should pluck him. His little yellow silk trousers would line my nest so softly.”

“Oh, please, please set me free!”

“Really, his song is growing quite charming! But one can’t stand listening to it all day.”

And with a great whir and flap and rustle of wings the birds flew away and left him in his cage, alone.

He called for help and threw himself against the bars until he was exhausted. Then bruised, panting, his heart nearly breaking out of his body, he lay on the floor of the cage. Finally, growing hungry and thirsty, he looked in his seed and water cups, drank a little lukewarm water, and ate a dry bread crumb. Now and then birds came and looked at him. Some of them tried to catch his pigtail with their beaks or claws.

Next day the Little Emperor was thoughtful. Could it be, he wondered, that a little bird’s nest was as dear to it as his own bed with its rainbow coverlets and its moon and stars was to him? That a little bird liked ripe berries and cold brook water as much as he liked ripe peaches and tea with jasmine flowers? That a little bird was as frightened when he tried to catch its tail in his fingers as he was when the birds tried to catch his pigtail?

And then he thought of how he had felt when the lady bird had wanted his pantaloons to line her nest, and, hot with shame, he remembered his glistening jewel-bright blue cloak made of thousands of kingfishers’ feathers. It had made him miserable to think of their taking his clothes, but suppose his clothes grew on him as their feathers did on them? How would he have felt then, hearing the bird say: “I should pluck him. His little silk trousers would line my nest so softly”?

He went to bed thinking about his little brown bird, and before he shut his eyes he made up his mind to set it free in the morning.

Then he fell asleep, and once again he dreamed that he was in the golden cage.

Whir-rr! One of the great birds flew down by the cage door. With his claw he unfastened it—opened it!

Oh, how exciting! The Little Emperor tore out, so afraid he would be stopped and put back in the cage!

Oh, how he ran across the room and through the open door! Free! He was free! Tears rushed to his eyes, and his heart felt as if it would burst with happiness.

But it was winter. The garden was deep in snow that was falling as if it would never stop. The peaches and plums were gone, and the lotus pond was frozen hard as stone.