To say the truth, Samdadchiemba was not an amiable young man; sour, savage, and sometimes saucy, he was by no means an agreeable fellow-traveller; yet he had in him a groundwork of honesty and devotion, quite capable, in our opinion, of compensating for the perversities of his nature. We felt at parting from him a deep affliction, and all the more so, that we had never suspected the existence, at the bottom of our hearts, of so strong an attachment to this young man. But we had made together a long and painful journey; we had endured together so many privations, and so much misery, that, unconsciously, our existence was, so to speak, fused with his. The law of affinity which unites men to each other, acts with much more power amidst suffering, than in prosperity. On the day appointed for our departure, two Chinese soldiers came, early in the morning, to inform us that the Ta-Lao-Ye, Ly-Kouo-Ngan; that is to say, his Excellency Ly, pacificator of kingdoms, awaited us at breakfast. This personage was the Mandarin whom the ambassador Ki-Chan had appointed to accompany us to China. We fulfilled his invitation; and, as the departure was to take place from his house, we had our luggage transported thither. Ly, the pacificator of kingdoms, was a native of Tchang-Tou-Fou, capital of the province of Sse-Tchouen; he belonged to the hierarchy of the military mandarins. For twelve years he had served in Gorkha, a province of Boutan, where he obtained rapid promotion, and reaching the dignity of Tou-Sse, with the general command of the troops guarding the frontiers bordering on the English possessions, he was decorated with the blue button, and enjoyed the privilege of wearing in his cap seven sable tails. Ly-Kouo-Ngan was only forty-five years old, but you would have taken him for seventy; so broken and battered was he; he had hardly any teeth left in his head; his scanty hair was grey; his dull and glassy eyes endured a strong light with difficulty; his flabby wrinkled face, his totally withered hands, and his enormous legs, upon which he could scarcely support his frame, all bespoke a man exhausted by great excesses. We thought at first that this premature senility resulted from an immoderate use of opium, but he informed us himself, in our very first conversation, that it was brandy which had reduced him to this state. Having obtained permission to quit the service, he was now about to seek, in the bosom of his family, and by a careful and severe diet, the restoration of his shattered health. The ambassador Ki-Chan had in fact hurried our departure in order that we might go in company with this Mandarin, who in his quality of Tou-Sse, was entitled to an escort of fifteen soldiers.