‘You may be able to understand faintly how such a proposal must
strike the Imperial ears, by imagining the case of a negro king in
the heart of Africa requiring Queen Victoria to send one of her sons
to prostrate himself in his kraal, because some accident had happened
to one of his slaves in London.’
I listened in silence to this illustration, which showed me that
the Dowager Empress was pretty well acquainted with the political
distinctions prevailing among those whom she professed to regard as
savages beneath her notice.
‘It is, of course, impossible,’ the courtly interpreter went on, ‘for
the Brother of the Sun and Moon to submit to this degradation, even
if it were safe to expose one of the Imperial House to the dangerous
magical arts of the West. It is rumoured that you have diabolical
contrivances called kodaks; now it is evident that if one of the Race
of Heaven were kodaked, the Sun himself might avenge such an insult
by refusing to shine upon the earth.’
He said all this with a perfectly serious air. But from the
expression on the face of the Empress I fancied her Majesty was a
little wearied of this fulsome strain.