Many rode out to see this entry, half expecting something spectacular, which would give them a change of thought.  But they were grievously disappointed.  Prince Ching merely appeared in a sedan chair, looking very old and very white, and with his cortege closely surrounded by Japanese cavalry, whose drawn swords gave the great man the appearance of a prisoner rather than that of an Envoy.  Every Chinese official, large and small, in the city came out on this occasion for the first time since the troops burst in; and sitting in what carts they could find, and clothed in the remains of their official clothes, they paid their Manchu dignitary their trembling respects.  What terror these wretched men exhibited until they actually met the Prince, and saw that there was going to be no treachery of shooting down by ignorant soldiery!  For a whole month everyone of them had been living disguised in the most humble clothes, escaping over back walls directly news was brought that marauders were at their front doors; offering their very women up so as to escape themselves; living in all truth the most wretched lives.  Hourly they had expected to be denounced by enemies to the European commanders as ex-Boxer chiefs, and then to be summarily shot.  That is what had happened for miles round Monseigneur F——­’s cathedral, it is being whispered.  The native Catholics, having died in hundreds, and lost whole families of relatives, had revenged themselves as cruelly as only men who have been between life and death for many weeks do.  They had led French soldiers into every suspected household, and pointing out the man on whom rumour had fixed some small blame, they had exacted vengeance.  Even on this day of Prince Ching’s entry this search and revenge was still going on; there were so many scores to pay....

It was plain to me that every official was thinking of these things, for the little convoys that I watched all day wending their way to the north of the city represented petrified fear in forms that I hope I may never see again.  I stopped one cart, all bedecked with flags—­German flags, English flags, Russian flags, French flags, Japanese flags, every kind of flag, to help to protect from all possible injury—­merely to inquire at what hour precisely Prince Ching would arrive and where he was going to live.  What a result these questions had!  Instantly he heard my voice, the official inside the cart crawled half out with a deathly green pallor on his face, and with his whole body trembling so violently that I thought he would collapse for good.  As it was, he remained in a sort of stricken attitude, like a man who has been stunned.  He was quite speechless.  I called to him several times that all was well, that he would not be hurt, to calm himself....  In vain.  Every word I spoke only added to his terror and remained unintelligible because of his panic.  He was a lost soul—­for ever.  The iron had entered too deeply.  He was so smitten that he never could be cured.