‘I am commanded to tell you that one of the barbarian chiefs who have made a disturbance in the capital of the Empire has made a demand, as the price of his departure, which is too insolent to be treated as anything but a display of the ignorant vanity of a savage. The chief I speak of exercises some authority among those of the Western devils who call themselves Dutch or Teutons.’
‘You mean the German Emperor?’ I said incautiously.
The interpreter put on a look of horror, as at some unheard-of blasphemy.
‘Hush, I implore you. You forget the Sacred Presence. There is only one Emperor—he whom her Majesty permits to execute her will over the black-haired people. The vain assumption of Imperial titles by these foreign bandits is deeply offensive to the Court of Heaven. You understand? All such upstarts exist merely by the tolerance of her Majesty. We will speak of this person as the Viceroy of the German Province.’
I could scarcely resist a smile as I bowed apologetically. I imagined myself repeating this conversation to Wilhelm II., a ruler not inclined to take too low an estimate of his own consequence.
‘This rebellious Viceroy,’ the Chinese courtier proceeded, ‘has had the unheard-of arrogance to require that a Prince of the Manchu dynasty shall travel to his unknown province to express regret for the death of its envoy at the Imperial Court.’
This announcement did not come to me as news. In passing through Pekin I had learned that one of the conditions of peace was that a Chinese Prince should go to Berlin to tender the Imperial apologies to the Kaiser for the murder of the German Ambassador during the Boxer rising.
The interpreter went on—
‘You may be able to understand faintly how such a proposal must strike the Imperial ears, by imagining the case of a negro king in the heart of Africa requiring Queen Victoria to send one of her sons to prostrate himself in his kraal, because some accident had happened to one of his slaves in London.’
I listened in silence to this illustration, which showed me that the Dowager Empress was pretty well acquainted with the political distinctions prevailing among those whom she professed to regard as savages beneath her notice.