.

* * * * *

We are beginning to call them Boxers--grudgingly and sometimes harking
back and giving them their full name, "Society of Harmonious Fists,"
or the "Righteous Harmony Fist Society"; but still a beginning has
been made, and they are becoming Boxers by the inevitable process of
shortening which distinguishes speech.

have been talking about them a good deal to-day, these Boxers,
since it has been the birthday of her most excellent Majesty Queen
Victoria, and the British Legation has been _en fete_. Her Majesty's
Minister, in fine, has been entertaining us in the vast and princely
gardens of the British Legation at his own expense. Weird Chinese
lanterns have been lighted in the evening and slung around the
grounds; champagne has been flowing with what effervescence it could
muster; the eleven Legations and the nondescripts have forgotten their
cares for a brief space and have been enjoying the evening air and the
music of Sir R---- H----'s Chinese band. Looking at lighted lanterns,
drinking champagne cup, listening to a Chinese band--where the devil
is the protocol and the political situation, you will say? Not quite
forgotten, since the French Minister attracted the attention of many
all the evening by his vehement manner. I pushed up once, too, and
with a polite bow listened to what he was saying. Ah, the old words,
the eternal words, the political situation, or the _situation
politique_, whichever way you like to use them. But still you listen a
bit, for it is droll to hear the yet unaccustomed word Boxers in
French. "_Les Boxeurs_," he says; and what the French Minister says is
always worth listening to, since he has the best Intelligence corps in
the world--the Catholic priests of China--at his disposal.

Curiously enough, he was speaking of the arch-priest of priests,
renowned above all others in this Peking world, Monseigneur F----,
Vicar Apostolic of the Manchu capital--almost Vicar of God to
countless thousands of dark-yellow converts. It is Monseigneur F----'s
letter of the 19th May, written but five days ago, and already locally
famous through leakage, which was the subject-matter of his impromptu
oration. Monseigneur F---- wrote and demanded a guard of marines for
his cathedral, his people and his chattels--_quarante ou cinquante
marins pour proteger nos personnes et nos biens_, were his exact
words, and his request has been cruelly refused by the Council of
Min