CHAPTER VIII - RESIDENCE AT LHASA

Summary

We were not many days in Lhasa before I found we had spies about us. One day came several Chinamen from the tribunals, and among them a little mandarin. He was vastly civil, vastly inquisitive. One begged me to write a sentence for him in my character, which I willingly did. They made Munshi go over the whole story; where he came from, and what places he had passed through. As soon as they were gone I said they were spies; and the next day the little mandarin came again, and put more questions to Munshi, and confessed he was sent by the Tatar. Afterwards there used to come people, one man at a time, of evenings. Munshi received them in his room, while I sat quiet in mine. They would stay a most unreasonable time, and at coming and going, as if by mistake, open my door, and take a survey, to see if I conspired with anyone of nights. They never found anyone in my room; my patients I always bid come by day, and nobody else at that time visited me. I always knew by the opening of my door what sort of man Munshi had with him. Certainly my bile used to rise when the hounds looked into my room. Sarcastic speeches in English and Latin came to my tongue's end, but I was not sufficiently master of Chinese to turn them, without being gross. It was better for me, perhaps, to say nothing.