on the other, alleged that they had gained many
souls to God in that country, without any one
knowing aught of the matter. Never were seen
such zealous converters. They alternately persecuted one another; they transmitted to Rome
whole volumes of slander, and treated each other
as infidels and prevaricators for the sake of one
soul. But the most violent dispute between them
was with regard to the manner of making a bow.
The Jesuits would have the Chinese to salute their
parents after the fashion of China, and the Dominicans would have them to do it after the fashion of
Rome.
I happened unluckily to be taken by the Jesuits for a Dominican. They represented me to his Tartarian majesty as a spy of the pope. The supreme council charged a prime mandarin, who ordered a sergeant, who commanded four shires of the country, to seize me and bind me with great ceremony. In this manner I was conducted before his majesty, after having made about a hundred and forty genuflections. He asked me if I was a spy of the pope's, and if it was true that that prince was to come in person to dethrone him. I told him that the pope was a priest of seventy years of age; that he lived at the distance of four thousand leagues from his sacred Tartaro-Chinese majesty; that he had about two thousand soldiers, who mounted guard with umbrellas; that he never dethroned any-
