Two days after this, on going as usual in the morning to the hall of audience, I found the doors shut and the old eunuch, who kept the keys, walking about in so sullen a mood that I could not get from him a single word. Different groupes of officers were assembled in the court-yard, all looking as if something very dreadful either had occurred, or was about to happen. Nobody would speak to me, nor could I get the least explanation of this extraordinary conduct, till at length our friend Deodato appeared with a countenance no less woeful than those of the officers of government, and the old eunuch. I asked him what was the matter? His answer was, We are all lost, ruined, and undone! He then informed me that intelligence had arrived from Gehol, stating, that Lord Macartney had refused to comply with the ceremony of prostrating himself, like the Embassadors of tributary princes, nine times before the Emperor, unless one of equal rank with himself should go through the same ceremony before the portrait of his Britannic Majesty: that rather than do this they had accepted his offer to perform the same ceremony of respect to the Emperor as to his own sovereign. That although little was thought of this affair at Gehol, the great officers of state in the tribunal or department of ceremonies in Pekin were mortified, and perplexed, and alarmed; and that, in short, it was impossible to say what might be the consequence of an event unprecedented in the annals of the empire. That the Emperor, when he began to think more seriously on the subject, might possibly impeach those before the criminal tribunal who had advised him to accede to such a proposal, on reflecting how much his dignity had suffered by the compliance; and that the records of the country might hand it down to posterity, as an event that had tarnished the lustre of his reign, being nothing short of breaking through an ancient custom, and adopting one of a barbarous nation in its place. Deodato thought even that its ill effects might extend to them, as Europeans, and might injure the cause which was the first object of their mission. I found it in vain to put into good humour that day either the officers of government, or the eunuchs, or even the missionaries; and our table was very materially affected by it, both in the number and the quality of dishes;--a criterion from which, more than any other, a judgment may be formed of the state of mind in which a Chinese happens to be. Something of the same kind, it seems, occurred at Gehol. From the time the Embassador began to make conditions, his table was abridged, under an idea that he might be starved into an unconditional compliance. Finding this experiment fail, they had recourse to a different conduct, and became all kindness and complaisance.