forgotten, since the French Minister attracted the attention of many
all the evening by his vehement manner. I pushed up once, too, and
with a polite bow listened to what he was saying. Ah, the old words,
the eternal words, the political situation, or the _situation
politique_, whichever way you like to use them. But still you listen a
bit, for it is droll to hear the yet unaccustomed word Boxers in
French. "_Les Boxeurs_," he says; and what the French Minister says is
always worth listening to, since he has the best Intelligence corps in
the world--the Catholic priests of China--at his disposal.

Curiously enough, he was speaking of the arch-priest of priests,
renowned above all others in this Peking world, Monseigneur F----,
Vicar Apostolic of the Manchu capital--almost Vicar of God to
countless thousands of dark-yellow converts. It is Monseigneur F----'s
letter of the 19th May, written but five days ago, and already locally
famous through leakage, which was the subject-matter of his impromptu
oration. Monseigneur F---- wrote and demanded a guard of marines for
his cathedral, his people and his chattels--_quarante ou cinquante
marins pour proteger nos personnes et nos biens_, were his exact
words, and his request has been cruelly refused by the Council of
Ministers on the ground that it is absurd. The Vicar Apostolic,
however, gave his grounds for making such a demand calmly and
logically--depicted the damage already done by an anti-foreign and
revolutionary movement in the districts not a thousand miles from
Peking, and solemnly forecasted what was soon to happen....

The French Minister was irate and raised his fat hands above his fat
person, took a discreet look around him, and then hinted that it was
this Legation, the British Legation, which stopped the marines from
coming.