‘It is, of course, impossible,’ the courtly interpreter went on, ‘for the Brother of the Sun and Moon to submit to this degradation, even if it were safe to expose one of the Imperial House to the dangerous magical arts of the West. It is rumoured that you have diabolical contrivances called kodaks; now it is evident that if one of the Race of Heaven were kodaked, the Sun himself might avenge such an insult by refusing to shine upon the earth.’
He said all this with a perfectly serious air. But from the expression on the face of the Empress I fancied her Majesty was a little wearied of this fulsome strain.
I ventured to bring him to the point.
‘Will you tell me what her Imperial Majesty desires me to do?’
‘Her Majesty graciously condescends to confide in you. Her slaves who reside among the Western viceroys have assured her that you respect the precept of the great Khung—“The counsellor who betrays his lord’s secret and the child who bites his mother, these are too base to be pardoned.”’
‘Go on,’ I said, becoming slightly impatient.
‘It being impossible to do what the German Viceroy asks, and her Majesty being benevolently anxious to spare him the humiliation of a refusal, there has been sought out a man of the people, a barber in the Tartar city of Pekin, whose features Heaven has permitted to bear a certain resemblance to those of his Imperial Highness, Prince Chung.
‘This respectable person, whose intelligence is remarkable for his station in life, has been provided with a dress sufficiently like that worn by the Imperial Family to deceive the barbarians. He has further received some lessons in etiquette and deportment during the last few weeks. He will now proceed to the regions of the West, and gratify the absurd pride of the Viceroy in the manner agreed upon.’
‘He will pass himself off as the Prince?’
‘It is necessary that he should do so, in order to soothe the Viceroy. It is better that the Prince’s name should incur this obloquy, than that the barbarian soldiery should continue their ravages in the Heavenly Kingdom.’