The Empress herself believed this story as well as the possibility of their being invulnerable to foreign bullets. She is exceedingly superstitious, and in the early part of May consulted the Chinese planchette to read her destiny. Two blind men, holding the instrument under a silk screen, wrote in the prepared sand underneath the following message from the spiritual world: “Ta Chieh Lin T’ou Hung Hsieh Hung Liu Pai Ku Ch’ung Ch’ung Chin Tsai Chin Ch’in Tan Kan T’ieh Ma Tung Hsi Tscu Shui Shih Shui Fei Ts’ai pai shiu.” The interpretation of this would read in English: “The millennium is at hand; Blood will flow like a deluge; Bleaching bones everywhere Will this autumn time be seen. Moreover, the iron horse Will move from east to west; Who’s right and who’s wrong Will then be clearly established.” The millennium is used by the Chinese as a critical period in a cycle of years. The iron horse is supposed to mean war. The Empress understood this to mean that in the war which she intended to commence it would be clearly shown by her success that she was right. [Illustration: A GROUP OF PROMINENT CHINESE OFFICIALS These men are connected with the Tsung-li-yamen.] The Boxers, however, completely spoiled all her plans by their eagerness to obtain loot. Being promised the spoil of the foreigners after the contemplated uprising in the eighth moon, they regarded the property of the Christians and their teachers as already mortgaged to them; and, fearful lest the government troops would acquire some of it, they commenced the campaign themselves before the appointed time. How the government at first made feeble efforts to restrain them, and afterward completely gave in and joined with them is now a matter of history. The monumental idiocy of the idea that China could successfully defy the whole civilized world was only possible to such brains as those possessed by the densely ignorant Manchus who surrounded the Empress as her cabinet. Several of the tsung-li-yamen ministers, like Prince Ch’ing and Liao Shou Heng, weakly tried to reason them out of it, and were promptly given back seats.