y were--should have the courage--let us call it so, for
there was truly much admirable bravery in it--to take the first step.

The details of the subsequent negotiations would fill pages.
How anxiously Li Hung Chang was waited for; how memorandum after
memorandum was drawn up, altered, amended, discarded altogether; how
the stricken city was gradually calmed, and traders induced to bring
in supplies again; how the poor ladies, wives of four Emperors, who
had been left behind in the palace almost starved to death when the
international troops guarding the Forbidden City forbade all ingress
and egress through the pink gates, until the I.G. saved them, in the
nick of time, by applying to the Allied Generals, might be told at
length.

But a busy age has little patience with details, however
romantic--suffice it to say that negotiations continued by fits and
starts. What really complicated them was the absence of the Court! The
I.G. frankly wrote as much to the Grand Secretary, Wang Wen Shao, and
in so doing he only voiced the general feeling that "at such a time
of suffering it would be well for the Emperor to be with his people."
Prince Ching willingly testified that. Though he had been back ten
days he had not suffered any personal indignity, and hinted that, were
the Emperor to return, he would, of course, meet with even greater
consideration. But the Court was obstinate. While the Palace was in
the hands of foreign troops they would not come--and so, for the
time, the negotiators had to get on as best they could without their
Imperial masters.

Only for a time, however. Then what persuasion had been unable to
accomplish was brought about by a natural calamity. Famine broke
out in the province of Shensi, and the Court suffered greatly in the
devastated state of the country and the cramped and uncomfortable
quarters of a Governor's yamen. Soon they were as desirous of
returning to their capital as they had formerly been reluctant to do
so. "Hurry up the negotiations at all costs" were the orders sent
to the Plenipotentiaries, and hurry they did, so that by December a
settlement was within sight, the two most difficult questions--those
dealing with penalties and indemnities--being the last arranged.

The first named long caused embarrassment to the Chinese side and
greatly worried everybody, for there seemed no possible way to
compromise about it. The last ultimately resolved itself into the
simple problem not whether