were just on the point of being concluded the Court suddenly desired
to retract some of their promises, thinking too much had been given
away. This was a cruel blow to the I.G., who well knew that the French
would never agree to the proposed changes and that the painstaking
work of weeks would topple over like a house of cards. As for China's
position in case the Treaty fell through, the less said about that the
better.

Notwithstanding, the I.G. did speak of it, and forcibly, to Yamên
Ministers, who did not listen--not because they would not, but
because they dared not for fear of exceeding their powers and bringing
Imperial censure on their own heads. What the I.G. must do, said they,
was to send a telegram immediately to Paris and say the Treaty could
not be signed as it was. He promised to do this--what else could he
do?--and went home from the Yamên disheartened, discouraged, and in no
mood for work.

[Illustration: STABLES OF SIR ROBERT HART IN THE RAINY SEASON.]

A weaker man would have "gloomed" openly; he did nothing more
despairing than stroll into the office of one of his secretaries and
have some talk about indifferent matters. None the less it was an
unusual thing for him to do, as, whenever they had business together,
his secretaries came to him, and he must have been pushed to it by one
of those mysterious impulses that sometimes shape men's destinies. Was
it the same strange impulse that sent him over to the bookcase in the
corner of the room, that made him pick out, at random, and without
thinking what he was doing, a volume of the Chinese classics, and when
he opened it carelessly made his eye light on the sentence "_Kung Kwei
Yih Kwei_,"--literally, the "work wants another basket"? (The phrase