In later years, when describing this affair to his friends, En used to add:
"When I first entered the room and saw the girl kneeling there, my first thought was that she had tried to as sassinate the Emperor, or something serious like that. But it was nothing of the sort. It was merely that the Emperor, having noticed the girl when visiting one of his harems, had become smitten with her and had made an assignation with her, And the Empress having got wind of the affair had come along that night and caught them in the act. The girl was only about sixteen years of age, very handsome and with a beautiful figure, so that her cruel and undeserved fate excited all the more pity. But it was just this that had awakened the particular wrath and jealousy of the Empress.
This tragic tale bears all the hallmarks of the truth. In the first place it is a well-established fact that the Emperor Tao Kuang was a very henpecked husband. Moreoger, En conduct can hardly be called heroic, even by Chinese standards. It was not the kind of story a man would invent about himself. A bolder t would have stood up to the Empress and refueled to obey her order which was quite illegal, and contrary to etiquette. While her threat to have him killed too, was merely a piece of bluff, as she had not the power of life and death over a member of the Imperial bodyguard it was merely an empty threat to frighten a timid soul such as En so obviously w Embarrassing Moment
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.