|
In the State of Chu, there was a man whose family was very poor. Even at night he often dreamt of striking it rich, but he never worked hard. One day, when he was leafing through the book Huainan Zi, he came across a line saying: "When the mantis1 preys2 on the cicada, it relies entirely3 upon a leaf to conceal4 its body." He thought that if one could get such a leaf, one could become invisible. Thereupon, he ran into the woods, looking for just such a leaf among the branches. He had searched a long time before he discovered a mantis hiding itself behind a leaf and waiting to catch a cicada. He climbed up the tree at once, and plucked the leaf. But he was in such a big hurry that, out of carelessness, the leaf dropped to the ground. There were many, many fallen leaves on the ground. How could he identify the leaf he had plucked? So he had to put all the leaves into a bamboo basket and carry them home. As soon as he got home, he held up one leaf after another in turn to cover his eye, and kept asking his wife: "Can you see me?" In the beginning, his wife always answered: "Yes, I can." After a long time, she began to feel weird5: What was the matter with her husband today? Why did he keep holding up a leaf and asking her the same question? He did this over and over again for one whole day. In the end, his wife got impatient and humoured him by saying: "No, I can't." | 
