Last winter, Chen Caozhi had borrowed Xie An's original Letter Presented to Wang Huzhi from Lu Na and copied it five times a day for half a month. He had thought he had captured much of the spirit of Xie's calligraphy, but the natural elegance of these mere thirty-three characters written by Zhu Yingtai was truly beyond him. The writing mirrored the person. This was the first time Chen Caozhi had discovered in a young scion of an aristocratic clan that noble bearing rooted in the bones and blood, then cultivated through years of immersion. Lu Qin did not have it, nor did He Zhu or Ding Chunqiu. As for Gu Kaizhi, it was not that he lacked nobility, only that he was all artless obsession and innocence, untouched by worldly affairs-
He thought again of Lu Weiwei. The pure and lovely Lu Weiwei seemed beyond such measures. She possessed the exquisite grace that nature bestowed on its finest creations. Just as the beauty of flowers could not be set beside the beauty of architecture for comparison, one could only say that both were beautiful.
Chen Caozhi stepped out of the Thatched Cottage and looked up. The moon of the eighteenth day of the second month had risen over the treetops of the eastern Peach Grove. Its clear radiance spilled down over the still, lovely peach blossoms. The stream flowed soundlessly, sending its burbling to the cottage only where it passed through narrow gaps, over piled stones, or around winding bends.
What a lovely moonlit night, one that made a person loath to go to bed!
Chen Caozhi said, "Shang Zhi, Chunqiu, the moonlight is just right. How about the three of us visiting the Zhu Clan brothers?"
"I'm not going," Ding Chunqiu said. "That fellow from Shangyu is far