T hey said that the Chinese had great respect for madmen, and that during 
the days of the Boxer Rebellion, certain Western missionaries, probably 
unstable characters to begin with, who had been trapped behind walls of rubble 
for weeks, scurrying through the sniper fire of the encircling Boxers and 
Imperial troops and listening to the cries of their flock being burned and 
tortured in the streets of Beijing, had become deranged and had walked unharmed 
into the ranks of their besiegers and been given food and treated with 
deference.