Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 15 November 1886.

Atrribution: In Scrapook 3 (28/3, pp. 50–1).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: This imaginary episode, RK's burlesque imitation of Victor Hugo's ‘extravagant prose’ (see headnote to ‘The History of a Crime’), brings together Thibaw (1869–1916), the exiled King of Burma, and his consort Supayalat, with Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy under whom Thibaw had been deposed at the end of 1885 by the so-called Third Anglo-Burmese War. Upper Burma, its capital at Rangoon, was officially annexed by the British at the beginning of 1886; Lower Burma had been annexed long before. But, though the country had been annexed, it had not been pacified, a fact exploited by RK in several stories and poems. Rutnagiri, the place of Thibaw's exile, is a port on the western coast of India.

Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets; in The Victorian, April, 1937; and in Harbord, iii, 1541–4.

Between the Conqueror and the Conquered exists of necessity a gêne – a mauvais honte.

Only the French can surmount that gêne.

But the French were not conquered. Jamais! Nevaire! They suffered certain reverses, with the inimitable politesse of their nation, at the hands of a race who eat raw sausage and bacilliferous pork.

How can one fight with a people who assimilate bacilli undisturbed?

But I become patriotic.

Sir Dufferin had conquered the amiable Thebau.

He now visited him at Rutnagiri.

Amicably; as certain soldiers once visited Paris.

But he was not impressed, as were those Teutons. On the contrary.

He was hot and tired. His boots were filled with sand.

The ascent from the beach to the house of the amiable Thebau lay through deep sand.

The amiable Thebau and the lovely Supialé received His Excellence with sherbet of the most possible cold and a Burmese cheroot.

The Burmese cheroot is like the British Policy. It is not strong enough and takes long to finish.

Also it makes men sick. * * * * ** ** * **