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Most fun was had in the Purple Forbidden City by Annam's late Emperor Thanh-Thai. Was there any rule of etiquet. demanded this ingenious monarch, which barred him from setting up a market in the Palace courtyard, with eunuchs to sell meat & vegetables, the Empress & concubines as buyers and His Majesty as the fishmonger? Abashed, the Keeper of the Book of Rites replied that His Majesty might have a market. Next day and every day thereafter the courtyard hummed with haggling, especially furious around His Majesty's fish booth.
For months the Court had fun until one day the audacious Empress screamed at the height of her haggling, "Your fish are not fresh!" Insulted beyond measure His Majesty broke Her Majesty's arm, declared himself disgusted with fishmongering, asked the French Government to install a tramway in the Palace grounds with himself as motorman.
Not etiquet but French thrift blocked this scheme. Finally His Majesty decided to play surgeon, cut open the stomach of a concubine ''to see what was inside." Soon afterward French doctors formally certified that His Majesty was mad and in 1905 he was banished to Reunion Island off the coast of Madagascar. On Reunion today languishes famed Abd-el-Krim, onetime bandit-chieftain of Morocco, who displeased the French exceedingly by fighting them with vigor, castrating captured Legionnaires (TIME, Sept. 20. 1926).