tever to China. The
Court is not even ridiculous in the eyes of the populace. It is merely
terribly unfortunate--a really luckless Court, which deserves to be
commiserated with and wept over rather than upbraided. For it is plain
to everyone that the first and last reason for all this is the
foreigner and no one else. Everything the foreigner does is always a
source of trouble.

Even the machinery of government has not been disturbed by the fact
that vast Peking, the vaunted capital, is in the hands of ruthless
invaders. At first everyone thought that with the Palace empty, and
all the great Boards and offices made mere camping-places for
thousands of hostile soldiery, the government of the whole empire
would be paralysed--sterilised. Yet that has not happened. The
government goes on much the same as ever. We know that now. For as the
Court flees it issues edicts, receives reports and accounts, is met
with tribute from provincial governors and viceroys, is clothed and
banqueted, makes fresh appointments, does its day's work while it
runs. I cannot understand, therefore, how this is to end. It is beyond
the keenest intellects in Peking, and people are now simply waiting
for things to happen and to accept facts as they may be dealt out by
the Fates. It is an inevitable policy. For you must always accept
facts when you cannot mould them.

XV

THE CLIMAX

October, 1900.

* * * * *

I am becoming tired of it all once again--inexpressibly tired. It
seems to me at times now as if those of us who remain had been very
sick, and then, when we had become convalescent, had been ordered by
some cruel fate to remain sitting in our sick-rooms forever. A siege
is always a hospital--a hospital where mad thoughts abound and where
mad things are done; where, under the stimulus of an unnatural
excitement, new beings are evolved, beings who, while having the
outward shape of their former selves, and, indeed, most of the old
outward characteristics, are yet reborn in some subtle way and are no
longer the same.

For you can never be exactly the same; about that there is no doubt.
You have been made sick, as it were, by tasting a dangerous poison.
Great soldiers have often told their men after great battles have been
fought and great wars won that they have tasted the salt of life. The
salt of life! Is it true, or is it merely a mistake, such as
life-loving man most naturally makes? For it can