A lady well known in the town, Madame Makeyeva, went to the governor, with whom she was personally acquainted, to beg that her young Chinese servant, who had been five years in her house, might remain with her. This servant had been of the greatest value to the family; if anyone were ill he nursed and tended them, watching by their bedside day and night. But when General Gribsky found that it was for a Chinese Madame Makeyeva was entreating, he cried, “A Chinaman!” and drawing his hand across his throat, added, “That’s how we shall treat them all.” And when Madame Makeyeva persisted in her entreaties, explaining further that the man in question had long wished to become a Christian, the governor merely answered, “I do not issue orders for either the imprisonment or the release of these people, it has nothing to do with me”; following up this with the declaration of his intention (which he subsequently carried out) to lay the whole blame of the drowning and slaughtering on the shoulders of his subordinates, Batarèvitch, prefect of police, and Captain Volkovinsky. The same lady had a similar reception from the highest spiritual authority of the place, the Bishop of the Orthodox Church. When Madame Makeyeva begged him on her knees to baptise her Chinese servant, this apostle of Christian love told her drily that she should not intercede for Chinamen, that it was not right to have them about one; finally recommending her to go to the civil authorities, whose business it was. The worldly power sent her to the spiritual, and the latter back to the former; but after much difficulty she actually succeeded in gaining her end. Few were so persevering in their efforts as she; I only found a very few instances of Chinese being successfully interceded for by their Russian employers, although I made very careful and exhaustive inquiries on the subject. The Chinese and Manchurians of the native quarter found no such advocates, and they were all drowned or otherwise murdered without exception. Apologists for the massacre were found even among people of culture, who argued that even had there not been the danger that the Chinese would set the town on fire, we were not called on to strengthen our enemies by sending their compatriots to reinforce them, or to waste our own provisions by keeping them under guard and so having to feed them. As to the former excuse, the natives could have been rendered perfectly harmless by being massed together in one place; and as for the latter, the Chinese had ample provision for their extremely modest needs in their own shops, which after their death were plundered by Cossacks, police, and others.