落髮之事 Say Nothing of the Shaving
國王見了，眼中流淚道：「想是寡人殺害和尚……」即傳旨吩咐：「汝等不得說出落髮之事，恐文武群臣褒貶國家不正。且都上殿設朝。」国王见了，眼中流泪道：「想是寡人杀害和尚……」即传旨吩咐：「汝等不得说出落发之事，恐文武群臣褒贬国家不正。且都上殿设朝。」
逐句解 Line by line
The king saw them, and tears came into his eyes. "I suppose it is because I have killed monks…" And at once he gave the order: "None of you is to speak of this shaving of heads. I am afraid the civil and military officers will say the state is not rightly governed.
落 is luò in 落髮, hair coming off — the term for taking the tonsure, entering religion. Not the là of leaving something behind, which is the reading the base wants to give it. The word he chooses is the religious one: he does not say his hair was cut, he says he has been tonsured. 褒貶 is to praise and to blame, and so to pass judgement.
Now all of you go up to the hall and hold court."
設朝 is to hold the morning audience, the daily business of government. Six characters, and he is going to conduct it bald.
He works out the cause in half a sentence and the novel gives him the ellipsis. For the first time the king is a person rather than a policy, and the first thing he does with the realisation is weep.
The second thing he does is issue a gagging order. His concern is not the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-six dead but whether the officials will think the state badly run — and the chapter's last joke is already waiting, because those officials are at that moment discovering their own heads.