Then there is Dr Parker, who flaps about like a raven but is a most amiable man and runs a hospital where many Chinese patients are treated. And there is a Mr Innes who is some kind of Highland Chieftain and strides about the Maidan like a Crusader, picking fights with all who have the temerity to cross his path. Mr Karabedian says that he is persuaded that all his endeavours are willed by a Higher Power, even the selling of opium!

But in Fanqui-town this conviction is not unusual, even with the missionaries. There are several of them here – a horrid Herr Gut-something who is always hectoring everyone; and a Reverend Bridgman, who is insufferably priggish. I confess I detest these Missionaries, and it is not, I promise you, because they treat me with the pitying solicitousness that is the due of a Child of Sin. Mr Karabedian says they are utter hypocrites and he has seen them, with his own eyes, distributing Bibles from one side of a ship while selling opium from the other. But there is this at least to be said for them that they present a marvellous opportunity for an exercise in the Gothic style – what fun it would be to show them up for the ghouls and charlatans that they really are!

And that is still not the end of it, for I certainly could not leave out Mr Charles King. He does not, properly speaking, constitute a faction, being but a party of one – yet by virtue of the example he sets, he is counted a considerable force in Fanqui-town. He is the representative of Olyphant & Co., which is, according to Mr Karabedian, the only firm in Canton that has never traded in opium! Of course he gets no credit for this from the other fanquis – on the contrary he is reviled for his rectitude, and is forever being accused of toadying up to the mandarins. But neither threats nor mockery can sway Mr King: even though he is a mere stripling compared to the venerable greybeards who rule over Fanqui-town he has held stubbornly to his course – which takes, as you may imagine, no little courage in a pasturage where every other creature meekly follows the bellowing bulls who lead the herd.

Mr King is not quite thirty but he is already the Senior Partner in his firm (the founder, Mr Olyphant has long been gone from Canton). But to look at Mr King you would never think him to be a businessman – silly creature that I am, I cannot deny, Puggly dear, that one of the reasons why I am drawn to Mr King is that he bears a striking resemblance to the painter who stands higher in my esteem than any other modern Artist: the magnificent and tragic Théodore Géricault.

I have only ever seen one likeness of Géricault, a pen-and-ink drawing by a Frenchman whose name I cannot remember – it shows him in his youth, with dark curls tumbling over his brow, an exquisitely dimpled chin, and a gaze that is marvellously dreamy and yet a-glow with passion. Anyone who has ever studied that portrait will surely gasp (as I did) if they happen to set eyes on Mr King – for the likeness is quite startling!