Palmeiro could reflect on various aspects of Chinese behaviour that had perturbed him: the haughtiness shown by mandarins towards the poor; their inability to grasp the distinction between church and state; their obscene number of wives. Most unsettlingly of all, though, Palmeiro could detect not the slightest trace of the worship of the One Creator God of Israel. The Chinese seemed to have no concept either of creation or of a god.
