servants tell us so.

These servants of polite Peking society are favoured mortals, for they
one and all are of the Eight Banners, direct descendants of the Manchu
conquerors of China. And, strangely enough, although they are thus
directly tied to the Manchu dynasty, and that some of them may be even
Red Girdles or lineal descendants of collateral branches of the
Imperial house, they are still more tightly tied to the foreigner
because they are Roman Catholic dating from the early days of
Verbiest and Schall, when the Jesuits were all supreme. On Sundays and
feast days they all proceed to the Vicar Apostolic's own northern
cathedral, and witness the Elevation of the Host to the discordant and
strange sound of Chinese firecrackers, a curious accompaniment,
indeed, permitted only by Catholic complacency. This they love more
than the Throne.

Your Bannerman servant is now the medium of bringing in countless
rumours which he barefacedly alleges are facts, and in impressing on
you that everyone must certainly die unless we quickly act. The three
Roman Catholic Cathedrals of Peking, placed at three points of the
compass, are almost strategic centres surrounded by whole lanes and
districts of Catholics captured to the tenets of Christ, or that
portion deemed sufficient for yellow men, in ages gone by. Every
household of these people during the past few weeks has seen
fellow-religionists from the country places running in sorely
distressed in body and mind, and but ill-equipped in money and means
for this impromptu escape to the capital which everyone vainly hopes
generally is to be a sanctuary. The refugees, it is true, do not
receive all the sympathy they expect, for the Peking Catholic being
the oldest and most mature in the eighteen provinces of China, holds
his head very high, and "new people"--that is, those whose families
have only been baptized, let us say, during the nineteenth
century--are somewhat disdained. In a word, the Peking cathedrals and
their Manchu and other adherents are the Blacks; and not even in papal
Rome could this aristocracy in religion be excelled. But although the
newcomers are disdained, their news is not. Everything they say is
believed. The servants, therefore, browsing rumours wherever they go,
bring back a curious hotchpotch after each separate excursion.
Sometimes the balance swings this way, sometimes that; sometimes it is
ominously black, sometimes only cloudy. You never know what it will