he turned and fled. Mr. Foreigner did not give chase. Ah Q slackened his gait to a walk, his heart filled with a melancholy despair. The fake foreigner, his only entree to the revolutionary party, had forbidden him to revolt; thenceforward he could no longer expect revolutionaries in white helmets and white armor to summon him to action—his talents, aspirations, hopes, and his career were all destroyed by the prohibition. In the face of these blasted hopes, the ridicule of such people as little Don and Wang the Beard, who would soon hear of it from the idle witnesses, seemed nothing.
Never before had he experienced such frustration, never before such a feeling of futility. His coiled queue seemed somewhat absurd even to himself. He began to despise it and he thought of letting it down to show how little he cared, but he did not do so. He wandered about until evening and then went to the tavern and gulped down two cups of wine, on credit. Gradually his spirits were restored and in his fertile imagination there again appeared fragments of shattered white helmets and white armor.
One day he had lingered in the tavern until closing time as usual and was on his way to the temple with slow heavy steps.
Bang! bang!
He suddenly heard a strange sound, like and yet unlike firecrackers. Always curious. Ah Q felt his way along in the darkness in the direction of the sound. He heard footsteps, and as he stopped to listen a man rushed by, as though fleeing from something. Ah Q turned around and fled after him. The man turned a corner; Ah Q turned also. The man stopped and Ah Q stopped, too. He looked back and found no danger threatening from behind; he looked at his man and found it was only little Don.
