The emperor had a mind, one day, to entertain me with one of the country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence.  I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground.  Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader’s patience, to enlarge a little.

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This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments and high favor at court.  They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth or liberal education.  When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty, and the court, with a dance on the rope, and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office.  Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty.  Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any lord in the whole empire.  I have seen him do the summersault several times together upon a trencher,[20] fixed on a rope, which is no thicker than a common packthread in England.  My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are much upon a par.

These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great numbers are on record.  I myself have seen two or three candidates break a limb.  But the danger is much greater when the ministers themselves are commanded to show their dexterity! for, by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is hardly one of them who hath not received a fall, and some of them two or three.  I was assured that a year or two before my arrival, Flimnap would have infallibly broke his neck if one of the king’s cushions, that accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall.

There is likewise another diversion, which is only shown before the emperor and empress and first minister, upon particular occasions.  The emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads, of six inches long; one is purple, the other yellow, and the third white.  These threads are proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor hath a mind to distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favor.  The ceremony is performed in his majesty’s great chamber of state, where the candidates are to undergo a trial of dexterity very different from the former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the old or new world.