The telegram that the I.G. did send that morning to his London agent was “Sign the Treaty.  But don’t sign the 1st of April,” he added, for they were then in the last days of March.  The sudden relief from anxiety made him want a little joke—­but he did not want it in the Treaty.  Unfortunately nobody appreciated the sally.  His Resident Secretary solemnly wrote on the telegram when he handed it to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, “Don’t sign on the 1st of April—­parce que c’est un jour nefasfe—­because it is an unlucky day.”  Either as a Scotchman he deplored the unseemly frivolity, or he thought the French could not appreciate a poisson d’Avril, and so racked his brains for a serious reason to justify the I.G.’s objection.

It so happened that the very day this message went to Paris, Sir Harry Parkes’s funeral took place.  After a useful and eventful life he died, as every one knows, at the summit of his ambitions while he was British Minister in Peking.  Just as the I.G. was going into the chapel for the service, one of the Legation Secretaries drew him aside to communicate a most important piece of news.  A wire had come in only a few minutes before offering “the appointment of Her Britannic Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary at Peking to Sir Robert Hart.”  To say the I.G. was surprised is not to say enough.  The offer, coming as it did under such solemn circumstances, made an impression upon him too deep for words.  Looking down at the coffin half hidden in flowers, he could not help feeling the vanity of earthly glories.  “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can take nothing out,” said the voice of the preacher.  The Envoy Extraordinary and the beggar travel towards the same goal, and one is scarcely more indispensable than the other.  Any pride he might have had in the new dignity was most effectively taken out of him, and I think that never in his life did the I.G. feel a deeper humility than on this day when, invited to take the Legation, he stood the one black-coated coated figure amid a blaze of diplomatic uniforms.

[Illustration:  THE INSPECTORATE STREET BEFORE 1900.]

In the evening Mr. O’Conor (afterwards Sir Nicholas), the First Secretary of the British Legation, came to dine with him and hear his answer—­which was that for the present he could not take up the appointment as British Minister because of those Franco-Chinese negotiations.  So well had the secret been kept this time that O’Conor had not the faintest idea anything important was going on; he heard the news with amazement.  Might he telegraph it home to his Government?  Yes, he might, provided he did not speak of the matter in Peking.

At the same time the I.G. begged that his appointment might not be gazetted just then, for possibly the French would not care to negotiate with a man about to become British Minister, and even if they made no formal objection, the fact could not fail to have considerable influence on Chinese affairs.