IV IN THE IMPERIAL CITY

I

Saturday, October 20.

It snows. The sky is lowering and overcast, with no hope of clearing, as though there were no longer any sun. A furious north wind is blowing, and the black dust whirls and eddies, commingling with the snowflakes.

This morning, my first interview with our minister took place at the Spanish legation. His temperature has fallen, but he is still very weak, and must remain in bed for some days, so I am obliged to postpone until to-morrow or the day after the communications I have to make to him.

I take my last meal with the members of the French legation in the chancellor's house, where, in default of sumptuous quarters, they have offered me the most kindly hospitality. At half-past one the two little Chinese chariots arrive, lent me for the emigration of myself, my people, and my light luggage to the Yellow City.

The Chinese chariots are very small, very massive, very heavy, and entirely without springs; mine has something of the elegance of a hearse; the outside is covered with a slaty-gray silk, with a wide border of black velvet.

We are to journey toward the northwest, in the opposite direction from the Chinese City where we were yesterday, and from the Temple of Heaven. We have five or six kilometres to go almost at a walk, on account of the pitiable condition of the streets and bridges, where most of the paving stones are missing.

These Chinese chariots cannot be closed; they are like a simple sentry box mounted on wheels,—so to-day we are lashed by the wind, cut by the snow, blinded by the dust.

First come the ruins of the legation district, full of soldiers. Then more lonely, almost deserted and entirely Chinese ruins—one gray, dusty devastation, seen vaguely through clouds of black and clouds of white. At the gates and on the bridges are European or Japanese sentinels, for the whole city is under military rule. From time to time we meet soldiers and ambulances carrying the flag of the Red-Cross Society.

At last the first enclosure of the Yellow or Imperial City is announced by the interpreter of the French legation, who has kindly offered to be my guide, and to share my chariot with its funeral trappings. I try to look, but the wind burns my eyes.

We are passing with frightful jolts through great blood-colored ramparts, not by way of a gate, but through a breach made with a mine by Indian cavalrymen.

Pekin, on the farther side of this wall, is somewhat less injured. In some of the streets the houses have kept their outside covering of gilded woodwork and their rows of chimæras along the edges of the roofs; all this is crumbling and decayed, it is true, licked by the flames or riddled by grape-shot. An evil-looking rabble, dressed in sheepskins or blue cotton rags, still swarms in some of the houses.

Another rampart of the same blood red and a great gate ornamented with faience through which we must pass,—this time it is the real gate of the Imperial City, the gate of the region which no one was ever allowed to enter; it is to me as though it had been announced as the gate to mystery or to an enchanted land.

We enter, and my surprise is great; for it is not a city, but a wood,—a sombre wood, infested with crows which croak in the gray branches. The trees are the same as those at the Temple of Heaven,—cedars, arbor-vitæ, and willows,—old trees all of them, of twisted shapes, unknown in our country. Sleet and snow cling to their branches, and the inevitable dust in the narrow, windy paths engulfs us.

There are also wooded hills where kiosks of faience rise among the cedars; in spite of their height, it is plain that they are artificial. Obscured by the snow and dust, we can see here and there in the distant wood austere old palaces, with enamelled roofs, guarded by horrible marble monsters which crouch at the thresholds.

The whole place is of an incontestable beauty, while at the same time it is dismal, unfriendly, and disturbing under this sombre sky.

Now we approach some enormous object which we shall soon be alongside of. Is it a fortress, a prison, or something more lugubrious still? Double ramparts without end, always blood red, with gloomy dungeons and a moat thirty metres wide, full of water-lilies and dying roses. This is the Violet City, enclosed in the heart of the impenetrable Imperial City, and more impenetrable still. It is the residence of the Invisible, of the Son of Heaven—God! but the place is gloomy, hostile, savage, beneath this sombre sky!

We continue to advance under the old trees into what seems the park of death.

Marble Bridge over Moat before Southern Gate of the Forbidden City

These dumb, closed palaces, seen first on one side, then on the other, are the Temple of the God of the Clouds, the Temple of Imperial Longevity, or the Temple of the Benediction of Sacred Mountains. Their names, inconceivable to us, the names of an Asiatic dream, make them still more unreal.

My companion assures me that this Yellow City is not always so terrible as it is to-day; for this weather is exceptional in a Chinese autumn, which is usually magnificently luminous. He promises me afternoons of warm sunshine in this wood, unique in all the world, where I shall make my home for several days.

"Now look," he said, "look! This is the Lake of the Lotus, and that is the Marble Bridge."

The Lake of the Lotus and the Marble Bridge! These two names have long been known to me as the names of things which could not be seen, but of things whose reputations had crossed insurmountable walls. They call up images of light and intense color, and are a surprise to me here in this mournful desert, in this icy wind.

The Lake of the Lotus! I had pictured it as sung by the Chinese poets, of an exquisite limpidity with great calices open to an abundance of water, a sort of aquatic plain covered with pink flowers, pink from one end to the other. And this is it!—This slime and this gloomy swamp, covered with dead leaves turned brown by the frost! It is infinitely larger than I supposed, this lake made by the hand of man; it goes on and on toward nostalgic shores, where ancient pagodas appear among the old trees, under the gray sky.

The Marble Bridge! Yes, this long, white arch supported by a series of white pillars, this exceedingly graceful curve, the balustrades with monsters' heads,—this all corresponds to the idea I had of it; it is very sumptuous and very Chinese. I had not, however, foreseen the two dead bodies decaying in their robes, which lay among the reeds at the entrance to the bridge.

The large dead leaves on the lake are really lotus-leaves; I recognize them now that I see them near at hand, and remember to have seen similar ones—but oh, so green and fresh—on the ponds of Nagasaki or of Yeddo. And there once must have been here the effect of an uninterrupted covering of pink blossoms; their fading stems rise now by thousands above the slime.

They will undoubtedly die, these fields of lotus, which for centuries have charmed the eyes of the emperors, for the lake is almost empty; it is the Allies who have turned its water into the canal that connects Pekin with the river, in order to re-establish this route which the Chinese had dried up for fear of its serving the purpose of the invaders.

The Marble Bridge, white and solitary, leads us across to the other bank of the lake, very narrow at this point, and there I shall find the Palace of the North, which is to be my residence. At first I do not see that there are enclosures within enclosures, all with great gates, dilapidated and in ruins. A dull light falls from the wintry sky through opaque clouds that are filled with snow.

In the centre of a gray wall there is a breach where an African chasseur is on guard; on one side lies a dead dog, on the other a pile of rags and filth breathing a corpse-like odor. This, it appears, is the entrance to my palace.

We are black with dust, powdered with snow, and our teeth are chattering with cold, when we finally get down from our chariot in a court encumbered with débris, where my comrade, Captain C., the aide-de-camp, comes to meet me. With an approach like this, one well might wonder if the promised palace were not chimerical.

Just back of this court there is, however, the first appearance of magnificence. Here and there is a long gallery of glass, light, elegant, and apparently intact, amid so much destruction. Through the panes one has glimpses of gold, porcelains, and imperial silks with designs of dragons and clouds. This is one corner of the palace, completely hidden until you are right upon it.

Oh, our evening meal on the night of our arrival in this strange dwelling! It is almost totally dark. At an ebony table my companion and I are seated, wrapped in our military cloaks with collars turned up, our teeth chattering with cold, and are served by our orderlies with trembling limbs. A feeble little Chinese candle of red wax, stuck in a bottle,—a candle picked up in the débris from some ancestral altar,—sheds a dim light, blown as it is by the wind. Our plates, in fact all the dishes, are of porcelain of inestimable value,—imperial yellow, marked with the cipher of a fastidious emperor, who was a contemporary of Louis XV. But our wine and our muddy water—boiled and reboiled for fear of poison in the wells—are in horrible old bottles with bits of potato, cut into shape by the soldiers, for corks.

The gallery where this scene takes place is very long; the distance is lost in obscurity where the splendors of an Asiatic tale are dimly perceived. Its sides are of glass up to the height of a man, and this frail wall is all that separates us from the sinister darkness which surrounds us; one has a feeling that the wandering forms outside, the phantoms attracted by our small light, may from a distance see us at table, and this is disturbing. Above the glass there is a series of light frames containing rice-paper, which reach to the ceiling, from which marvellous ebony sculptures depend, delicate as lacework; this rice-paper is torn, and allows the mortally cold night wind to strike us. Our frozen feet rest on imperial yellow carpets of the finest wool, with the five-horned dragons sprawling upon them. Close to us gigantic incense-burners of cloisonné of the old inimitable blue, with gold elephants as pedestals, are softly burning; there are magnificent and fanciful screens; phœnixes of enamel spread their long wings; thrones, monsters, things without age and without price abound. And there we are, inelegant, dusty, worn, soiled, with the air of coarse barbarians, installed like intruders in fairyland.

What must this gallery have been scarcely three months ago, when instead of silence and death there was life, music, and flowers; when a crowd of courtiers and servants in silken robes peopled these approaches so empty and ruined to-day; when the Empress, followed by the ladies of the palace, passed by dressed like goddesses!

Having finished our supper, which consisted of the regular army ration, having finished drinking our tea out of museum-like porcelain, now for the hour of smoking and conversation. No, we try in vain to think it amusing to be here, in this unforeseen and half fantastic way. It is too cold; the wind chills us to the marrow. We do not enjoy anything. We prefer to go off and to try to sleep.

My comrade, Captain C., who has taken possession of the place, leads me with a lantern and a few followers to the apartment set aside for me. It is on the rez-de-chausée, of course; there are no real stories in Chinese houses. As in the gallery, from which we come, there is nothing between me and the night outside but a few panes of glass, very light shades of white silk, and windows of rice-paper torn from one end to the other. As to the door, which is made of one great pane of glass, I fasten it with a cord, since there is no lock.

There are some admirable yellow rugs on the floor, thick as cushions. I have a big imperial bed of carved ebony, and my mattress and pillows are covered with precious silk embroidered in gold, but there are no sheets, although I have a soldier's gray woollen blanket.

To-morrow my companion tells me I may go and select from her Majesty's reserve supply whatever I wish in the way of further decorations for this room, as it can do no one any harm to move things about.

Assuring me that the gates of the outer enclosure, as well as the breach by which I entered, are guarded by sentinels, he retires with his orderlies to the other end of the palace.

Dressed, and with my boots on, I stretch myself out on the beautiful silk cushions, adding to my gray blanket an old sheepskin and two or three imperial robes embroidered with gold chimæras. My two servants arrange themselves in like manner on the floor. Before blowing out the red candle from some ancestral altar, I am constrained to admit in my secret soul that the accusation that we are "Occidental barbarians" has been completely confirmed since supper.

The wind has tormented and torn all that was left of the rice-paper in my panes; above me there is a perpetual sound like the movement of the wings of nocturnal birds or the flight of bats. I distinguish occasionally, although half asleep, a short fusillade or an isolated cry in the distance.

II

Sunday, October 21.

Cold, darkness, death, all that oppressed us last night, has disappeared with the morning light. The sun shines warm as a summer sun. The somewhat disordered Chinese magnificence which surrounds us is bright with the light of the East.

It is amusing to go on a voyage of discovery over this almost hidden palace, which lurks in a low spot, behind walls, under trees, looking quite insignificant as you approach it, but is, together with its dependencies, almost as large as a city.

It is made up of long galleries enclosed on all sides in glass; the light framework, the verandahs, the small columns, are painted on the outside a greenish bronze decorated with pink water-lilies.

One has the feeling that it was built according to the fancies of a woman; it even seems as though the splendid old Empress had left in it, along with her bibelots, a touch of her superannuated yet still charming grace.

The galleries cross one another at right angles, forming courts at the junctures, like little cloisters. They are filled with objects of art, which can be equally well seen from without, for the entire palace is transparent from one end to the other. There is nothing to protect all this glass even at night; the place was enclosed by so many walls and seemed so inviolable that no other precaution was deemed necessary.

Within, the architectural elegance consists of arches of rare wood, crossing at frequent intervals; they are made of enormous beams so carved, so leafy, so open, that they seem like lace, or, rather, like bowers of dark leaves that form a perspective comparable to the lanes in old parks.

The wing which we occupy must have been the wing of honor. The farther away from it one goes in the direction of the woods where the palace ends, the more simple does the decoration become. At one end are the lodgings of the mandarins, the stewards, the gardeners, the domestics, all hurriedly abandoned and full of unfamiliar objects, household utensils or those used in worship, ceremonial hats and court liveries.

Then comes an enclosed garden which is entered by an elaborately carved marble gate. Here one finds small fountains, pretentious and curious rockwork, and rows of vases containing plants which have died from lack of water or from cold. Further on there is an orchard where figs, grapes, eggplant, pumpkins, and gourds were cultivated,—gourds especially, for in China they are emblems of happiness, and it was the custom of the Empress to offer one with her own white hands to each of the dignitaries who came to pay his court to her in exchange for the magnificent presents he brought her. There are also small pavilions for the cultivation of silkworms and little kiosks for storing edible grains; each kind was kept in a porcelain jar decorated with imperial dragons, worthy of a place in a museum.

The parks of this artificial little landscape end in the brush, where they lose themselves under the leafless trees of the wood where to-day the crows and the magpies are enjoying the beautiful autumn sun. It seems that when the Empress gave up the regency—and we know by what an audacious manœuvre she so quickly managed to take it up again—it was her caprice to construct a bit of the country here in the heart of Pekin, in the very centre of this immense human ant-hill.

The most surprising thing in all this enclosure is a Gothic church with two granite bell-towers, a parsonage, and a school,—all built in other days by the missionaries and all of enormous size. But in order to create this palace it was necessary to enlarge the limits of the Imperial City and to include in them this Christian territory; so the Empress gave the Lazarist Fathers more land and a more beautiful church, erected at her own expense, where the missionaries and several thousand converts endured all last summer the horrors of a four-months' siege.

Like the systematic woman that she was, her Majesty utilized the church and its dependencies for storing her reserves of all sorts, packed in innumerable boxes. One could not imagine without having seen them what an accumulation there could be of the strange, the marvellous, and the preposterous in the reserve stock of bibelots belonging to an Empress of China.

The Japanese were the first to forage there, then came the Cossacks, and, lastly, the Germans, who left the place to us. At present the church is in indescribable disorder,—boxes opened, their precious contents scattered outside in rubbish heaps; there are streams of broken china, cascades of enamel, ivory, and porcelain.

In the long glass galleries a similar state of things exists. My comrade, who is charged with straightening out the chaos and making an inventory, reminds me of that person who was shut up by an evil spirit in a chamber filled with the feathers of all the birds of the woods and compelled to sort them by species; those of the finch, the linnet, the bullfinch together. However, he has already set about his difficult task, and with Chinese workmen, under the direction of a few marines and some African chasseurs, has already begun to clear things away.

Five metres from here, on the opposite shores of the Lake of the Lotus, as I was retracing my steps last night, I found a second palace which once belonged to the Empress, which is now ours also. In this palace, which no one is occupying at the moment, I am authorized to set up my work-room for a few days, so that I may have quiet and isolation.

It is called the Rotunda Palace. Exactly opposite the Marble Bridge, it resembles a circular fortress, on which have been placed small miradors,—little, fairy-like castles,—and the single low entrance is guarded day and night by soldiers, whose orders are to admit no one.

When you have crossed the threshold of this citadel, and the guards have closed the door after you, you penetrate into the most exquisite solitude. An inclined plane leads you to a vast esplanade about twelve metres above the ground, where the miradors—the little kiosks—seen from below stand; there is a garden with old, old trees, a labyrinth of rocks, and a large pagoda shining with gold and enamel.

From here there is a commanding view of the palace and its park. On one side the Lake of the Lotus is spread out; on the other, one has a bird's-eye view of the Violet City, showing the almost endless succession of high imperial roofs,—a world of roofs, a world of enamel shining in the sunshine, a world of horns, claws, and monsters on gable and tiling.

I walk in the solitude of this high place, in the shade of the old trees, trying to understand the arrangement of the house and to choose a study to my fancy.

In the centre of the esplanade is the magnificent pagoda which was struck by a shell and which is still in battle disarray. Its presiding divinity—a white goddess, who was the Palladium of the Chinese empire, an alabaster goddess with a gold dress embroidered with precious stones—meditates with downcast eyes, sweet, calm, and smiling, in the midst of the destruction of her sacred vases, of her incense-burners and her flowers.

One large gloomy room has kept its furnishings intact,—an admirable ebony throne, some screens, seats of all shapes, and cushions of heavy yellow imperial silk, brocaded with a cloud effect.

Among all the silent kiosks the one which I fix upon as my choice is at the very edge of the esplanade on the crest of the surrounding wall, overlooking the Lake of the Lotus and the Marble Bridge, and commanding a view of the whole factitious landscape,—created out of gold ingots and human lives to please the weary eyes of emperors.

It is hardly larger than a ship's cabin, but its sides are made of glass extending to the roof, so that I shall be kept warm until nightfall by the autumn sun, which here in China is seldom over-clouded. I have a table and two ebony chairs with yellow silk coverings brought in from the adjoining room,—and thus installed, I descend again to the Marble Bridge and return to the Palace of the North, where Captain C., my companion in this Chinese dream, is waiting breakfast for me.

I arrive in time to see, before they are burned, the curious discoveries of the morning,—the decorations, emblems, and accessories of the Chinese Imperial Theatre. They were cumbersome, frail things, intended to serve but for a night or two, and then forgotten for an indefinite time in a room that was never opened, and which they are now clearing out and cleaning for a hospital for our sick and wounded. Mythological representations were evidently given at this theatre, the scene taking place either in hell or with the gods in the clouds; and such a collection as there was of monsters, chimæras, wild beasts, and devils, in cardboard or paper, mounted on carcasses made of bamboo or whalebone, all devised with a perfect genius for the horrible, with an imagination surpassing the limits of a nightmare!

The rats, the dampness, and the ants have caused irremediable havoc among them, so it has been decided to burn all these figures that have served to amuse or to trouble the dreams of the drowsy, dissipated, feeble young Emperor.

Our soldiers are hurrying amid joy and laughter to carry all these things out of doors. Here in the morning sunlight of the courtyard are apocalyptic beasts and life-sized elephants that weigh nothing at all, and which one man can make walk or run. They kick them, they jump upon them, they jump into them, they walk through them and reduce them to nothing; then at last they light the gay torch, which in the twinkling of an eye consumes them.

Other soldiers have been working all the morning pasting rice-paper into the sashes of our palace so that the wind shall not enter. As for artificial heat, it comes up from below, Chinese fashion, from subterranean furnaces which are arranged under the rooms, and which we shall light this evening as soon as the chill comes on. For the moment the splendid sunshine suffices; so much glass in the galleries, where the silks, enamels, and gold glisten, gives us the heat of a greenhouse, and on this occasion we take our meal, which is always served on the Emperor's china, in an illusion of summer.

The sky of Pekin is subject to excessive and sudden variations of which we with our regular climate can form no conception. Toward the middle of the day, when I find myself out of doors again under the cedars of the Yellow City, the sun has suddenly disappeared behind some leaden clouds which seem heavy with snow; the Mongolian wind begins to blow, bitter cold, as it was yesterday, and again a northern winter follows with no transition stage a few hours of the radiant weather of the Midi.

I have an arrangement to meet the members of the French legation in the woods, to explore with them the sepulchral Violet City, which is the centre, the heart, the mystery of China, the veritable abode of the Son of Heaven, the enormous Sardanapalian citadel, in comparison with which all the small modern palaces in the Imperial City where we are living seem but children's playthings.

Even since the flight it has not been easy to enter the Violet City with its yellow enamelled roofs. Behind the double walls, mandarins and eunuchs still dwell in this home of magnificence and oppression, and it is said that a few women, hidden princesses, and treasures still remain. The two gates are guarded by severe sentries,—the north gate by the Japanese, the south by Americans.

It is by the first of these two entrances that we are authorized to pass to-day, and the group of small Japanese soldiers that we find there smile upon us in welcome; but the austere gate—dark red with gilded locks and hinges, representing the heads of monsters—is closed from within and resists their efforts. The use of centuries has warped the enormous doors so that through the crack one can see boards fastened on to the inside to prevent their opening, and persons running about announcing in flute-like voices that they have received no orders.

We threaten to burn the doors, to climb over them, to shoot through the opening; all sorts of things which we have no intention of doing, but which frighten the eunuchs and put them to flight.

No one is left to answer us. What are we to do? We are freezing our feet by this cold wall; the moat, full of dead reeds, exhales dampness, and the wind continues to blow.

The kindly Japanese, however, send some of their strongest men—who depart on a keen run—to the other gate, some four kilometres around. They light a fire for us out of cedar branches and painted woodwork, where we take turns warming our hands while we wait; we amuse ourselves by picking up here and there old feathered arrows thrown by prince or emperor from the top of the walls. After an hour's patient waiting, noise and voices are heard behind the silent gate; it is our envoy inside cuffing the eunuchs.

Suddenly the boards creak and fall and the doors open wide before us.

III THE ABANDONED ROOM

There is a faint odor of tea in the dark room, an odor of I know not what beside,—of dried flowers and old silks.

There is no way of getting more light in this curious room, which opens into a big gloomy salon, for its windows receive only half-light because of the rice paper in all the panes; they open onto a yard that is no doubt surrounded by triple walls. The alcove-bed, large and low, which seems to be set into an inner wall thick as a rampart, has silk curtains and a cover of dark blue,—the color of the sky at night. There are no seats, indeed there would scarcely be room for any; neither are there any books, nor could one very well see to read. On the dark wooden chests which serve as tables, stand melancholy bibelots in glass cases; small vases of bronze or of jade containing very stiff artificial bouquets, with petals made of mother-of-pearl and ivory. A thick layer of dust over everything shows that the room is not occupied.

Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment The Big Tower or Wall Entrance of Tartar City

At first sight there is nothing to mark the place or the time,—unless, possibly, the fineness of the ebony carving of the upper part of the bed reveals the patience of the Chinese. Everything is sombre and gloomy, with straight, austere lines.

Where are we, then, in what obscure, closed, clandestine dwelling?

Has some one lived here in our time or was it in the distant past?

How many hours—or how many centuries—has he been gone, and who could he have been, the occupant of the abandoned room?

Some sad dreamer evidently, to have chosen this shadowy retreat; some one very refined, to have left behind him this distinguished fragrance, and very weary, to have been pleased with this dull simplicity and this eternal twilight.

One feels stifled by the smallness of the windows, whose panes are veiled with silky paper, and which never can be opened to admit light or air because they are sealed into the wall. And besides, you recall the weary way you must take to get here, and the obstacles you encounter, and that disturbs you.

First, there is the big black Babylonian wall, the superhuman ramparts of a city more than ten leagues around, which to-day is a mass of ruins, half empty, and strewn with corpses; then a second wall, painted blood-red, which forms a second city enclosed in the first. Then a third wall, more magnificent still, and also the color of blood; this is the wall that surrounds the great mysteries of the place, and before the days of the war and the fall of the city no European had ever gone beyond it; to-day we were detained for more than an hour, in spite of passes, signed and countersigned; through the keyhole of a great gate guarded by soldiers and barricaded from within, we were compelled to threaten and argue at length with the guards inside, who sought to hide and to escape. These gates once opened, another wall appeared, separated from the former one by a road going all the way around the enclosure; here tattered garments were scattered about, and dogs were playing with the bones of the dead. This wall was of the same red, but still more splendid, and was crowned along its entire length by a horned ornamentation and by monsters made of a golden yellow faience. When we had finally passed this third wall, queer old beardless persons came to meet us with distrustful greetings, and guided us through a maze of little courts and small gardens, walled and walled again, in which old trees were growing amongst rockwork and jars. All of it was separate, concealed, distressing; all of it protected and peopled by monsters and chimæras in bronze or marble, by a thousand faces, whose grimaces signified ferocity and hatred, by a thousand unknown symbols. And every time each gate in the red walls with the yellow faience tops closed behind us, as in horrible dreams the doors of a series of passageways close upon one, nevermore to permit one to go out.

Now, after our long journey which seems like a nightmare, we feel, as we look at the anxious group who have conducted us, walking noiselessly on their paper soles, that we have committed some supreme and unheard-of profanation in their eyes, in penetrating to this modest room; they stand there in the doorway, peering obliquely at our every gesture; the crafty eunuchs in silken robes, and the thin mandarins, wearing along with the red button of their headdresses, the melancholy raven's quill. They were compelled to yield, they did not wish to; they tried by every ruse to lead us to some other part of the immense labyrinth of this palace of Heliogabalus; to interest us in the luxurious salons farther on, in the great courts, and in the marble balconies, which we shall see later; in a whole Versailles some distance farther on, now overgrown by weeds, and where no sound is heard but the song of the crows.

They were determined we should not come here, and it was by observing the dilation of the pupils of their frightened eyes that we guessed which way to go.

Who lived here, then, sequestered behind so many walls,—walls more terrible by far than those of our western prisons? Who could he have been, the man who slept in this bed under these silken covers of nocturnal blue, and in his times of revery, at nightfall or at dawn, on glacial winter days, was obliged to contemplate these pensive little bouquets under glass, ranged so symmetrically along the black chests?

It was he, the invisible Emperor, Son of Heaven, childish and feeble; he whose empire is vaster than all Europe, and who reigns like a vague phantom over four or five hundred millions of subjects.

It is the same person in whose veins the vigor of half-deified ancestors is exhausted, who has too long remained inactive, concealed in this palace more sacred than a temple; the same who neglects and envelops in twilight the diminishing place where he is pleased to live. The immense setting in which former emperors lived frightens him and he abandons it all; grass and brushwood grow on the majestic marble railings and in the grand courtyards; crows and pigeons by the hundreds make their nests in the gilded vaults of the throne room, covering with dirt and dung the rich and curious rugs left there to be ruined. This inviolable palace, a league in circumference, which no foreigner has ever seen, of which one can learn nothing, guess nothing, has in store for Europeans who enter it for the first time the surprise of mournful dilapidation and the silence of a tomb.

The pale Emperor never occupied the throne rooms. No, what suited him was the quarter where the small gardens were, and the enclosed yards, the quaint quarter where the eunuchs tried to prevent our going. The alcove-bed in its deep recess, with its curtains like the blue of night, indicates fear.

The small private apartments behind this gloomy chamber extend like subterranean passages into still deeper shadows; ebony is the prevailing wood; everything is intentionally sombre, even the mournful mummified bouquets under their glass cases. There is a soft-toned piano which the young Emperor was learning to play, in spite of his long, brittle nails; a harmonium, and a big music-box that gives Chinese airs with a tone that seems to come from beneath the waters of a lake.

Beyond this comes what was doubtless his most cherished retreat,—it is narrow and low like the cabin of a ship, and exhales the fine odor of tea and dried rose-leaves.

There, in front of a small airhole covered with rice paper, through which filters a little sombre light, lies a mattress, covered with imperial golden-yellow silk, which seems to retain the imprint of a body habitually extended upon it. A few books, a few private papers, are scattered about. Fastened to the wall are two or three unimportant pictures, not even framed, representing colorless roses, and written in Chinese characters underneath are the last orders of the physician for this chronic invalid.

What was the real character of this dreamer, who shall ever say? What distorted views of life had been bequeathed to him of the things of this world and of the world beyond? What do all these gruesome symbols signify to him? The emperors, the demigods, from whom he descends, made old Asia tremble; tributary sovereigns came from great distances to prostrate themselves, filling this place with banners and processions more magnificent than our imaginations can picture; within these same walls, so silent to-day, how and under what passing phantasmagoric aspects did he retain the stamp of the wonderful past?

And what confusion must have entered his unfathomable little brain when the unprecedented act was accomplished, and events occurred which he never in his wildest fears could have anticipated! His palace, with its triple walls, violated to its most secret recesses; he, the Son of Heaven, torn from the dwelling where twenty generations of his ancestors had lived inaccessible; obliged to flee, and in his flight to permit himself to be seen, to act in the light of day like other men, perhaps even to implore and to wait!

Just as we are leaving the abandoned room our orderlies, who purposely remained behind, laughingly throw themselves on the bed with the nocturnal blue curtains, and I hear one of them remark gaily in an aside and with a Gascon accent: "Now, old fellow, we can say that we have lain on the bed of the Emperor of China."

IV

Monday, October 22.

Chinese workmen,—amongst whom we are warned that there are spies and Boxers,—who look after the fires in the two furnaces in our palace, have kept us almost too warm all night. When we get up there is, as there was yesterday, another illusion of summer on our light verandah with the green columns painted with pink lotus flowers. An almost burning sun is rising and shining upon the ghostly pilgrimage which I am about to make on horseback, toward the west, outside the Tartar City, and through the ashy, silent, ruined suburbs.

In this direction there were, scattered through the dusty country, Christian cemeteries which even in 1860 had never been violated by the yellow race. But this time they furiously attacked the dead, and left chaos and abomination behind them. The oldest remains, those of missionaries who had been sleeping there for three centuries, were disinterred, crushed, piled up and set on fire in order to destroy, according to Chinese beliefs, whatever might still be left of their souls. One must be somewhat acquainted with the ideas of the country in order to understand the enormity of this supreme insult to all our Occidental races.

The cemetery of the Jesuit Fathers was singularly splendid. They were formerly very powerful with the Celestial Emperors, and borrowed for their own tombs the funereal emblems of the princes of China. The ground is literally strewn now with big marble dragons and tortoises, and with tall stele with chimæras coiled about them; all these carvings have been thrown down and smashed; the heavy stones of the vaults have been broken also, and the ground thoroughly overturned.

A more modest enclosure, not far away, has for a long time been the burial-place for the European legations. It has undergone the same treatment as the beautiful cemetery of the Jesuits. The Chinese have ransacked the graves, destroyed the bodies, and even violated the coffins of little children. Some few human bones are still lying on the ground, while the crosses that marked the graves are placed upside down. It is one of the most poignantly affecting sights that ever met my eyes.

Some good Sisters who lived near by kept a school for Chinese children; of their houses nothing is left but a pile of bricks and ashes, even the trees have been uprooted and stuck back in the ground head foremost.

This is their story:—

They were alone one night when about a thousand Boxers came along, shouting their death cries and playing gongs. The Sisters began to pray in their chapel as they awaited death. However, the noise died away, and when day broke no one was in sight, so they escaped to Pekin and took shelter with the bishop, taking their frightened little pupils with them. When the Boxers were asked later why they had not entered and killed the Sisters, they replied: "Because we saw soldiers' heads and guns all around the convent walls." So the Sisters owed their lives to this hallucination of their executioners.

The wells in the deserted gardens fill the air to-day with odors of the dead. There were three large cisterns which furnished a water so pure that they sent all the way from the legations to get it. The Boxers filled these wells up to the brim with the mutilated bodies of little boys from the Brothers' school and from Christian families in the neighborhood. Dogs came to eat from the horrible pile which came up to the level of the ground; but they had their fill, and so the bodies were left, and have been so preserved by the cold and dryness that the marks of torture upon them may still be seen. One poor thigh has been slashed in stripes after the manner in which bakers sometimes mark their loaves of bread, another poor hand is without nails. And here is a woman from whom one of the private parts of her body has been cut and placed in her mouth, where it was left by the dogs between her gaping jaws. The bodies are covered with what looks like salt, but which proves to be white frost, which in shady places never melts here. Yet there is enough clear, implacable sunshine to bring out the emaciation and to exaggerate the horrors of the open mouths, their agonized expressions, and the rigidity of the anguished positions of the dead.

There is not a cloud to-day, but a pale sky which reflects a great deal of light. All winter, it seems, it is much the same; even in the coldest weather rains and snows are very exceptional in Pekin.

After our brief soldiers' breakfast, served on rare china in the long gallery, I leave the Palace of the North to install myself in the kiosk on the opposite shore, which I selected yesterday, and to begin my work. It is about two o'clock; a summer's sun shines on my solitary path, on the whiteness of the Marble Bridge, on the mud of the Lake, and on the bodies that sleep amongst the frosted lotus leaves.

The guards at the entrance to the Rotunda Palace open and close behind me the red lacquered doors. I mount the inclined plane leading to the esplanade, and here I am alone, much alone, in the silence of my lofty garden and my strange palace.

In order to reach my work-room, I have to go along narrow passageways between old trees and the most unnatural rockwork. The kiosk is flooded with light, the beautiful sunshine falls on my table and on my black seats with their cushions of golden yellow; the beautiful melancholy October sunshine illumines and warms my chosen retreat, where the Empress, it seems, loved to come and sit and watch from this high point her lake all pink with flowers.

The last butterflies and the last wasps, their lives prolonged by this hot-house warmth, beat their wings against the window-panes. The great imperial lake is spread out before us, spanned by the Marble Bridge; venerable trees form a girdle around shores out of which rise the fanciful roofs of palaces and pagodas,—roofs that are one marvellous mass of faience. As in the landscapes painted on Chinese fans, there are groups of tiny rocks in the foreground, and small enamelled monsters from a neighboring kiosk, while in the middle distance there are knotted branches which have fallen from some old cedar.

I am alone, entirely and deliciously alone, high up in an inaccessible spot whose approaches are guarded by sentinels. There is the occasional cry of a crow or the gallop of a horse down below, at the foot of the rampart whereon my frail habitation rests, or the passing of an occasional messenger. Otherwise nothing; not a single sound near enough to trouble the sunny quiet of my retreat. No surprise is possible, no visitor.

I have been working for an hour, when a light rustling behind me from the direction of the entrance gives me the feeling of some discreet and agreeable presence. I turn round, and there is a cat who has stopped short with one foot in the air, hesitating and looking me straight in the eye, as if to ask: "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

I call him quietly, he replies with a plaintive miaul; and I, always tactful with cats, go on with my writing, knowing very well that in a first interview one must not be too insistent.

He is a very pretty cat, yellow and white, with the distinguished and elegant air of a grand seignior. A moment later and he is rubbing against my leg; so then I put my hand slowly down on the small, velvety head, which, after a sudden start, permits my caresses and abandons itself to them. It is over; the acquaintance is made. He is evidently a cat accustomed to petting, probably an intimate of the Empress. To-morrow and every day I shall beg my orderly to bring him a cold luncheon from my rations.

The illusion of summer ends with the day. The sun sets big and red behind the Lake of the Lotus, all at once taking on a sad, wintry look; at the same time a chill comes over all things, and the empty palace grows suddenly gloomy. For the first time that day I hear footsteps approaching, resounding in the silence on the pavement of the esplanade. My servants, Osman and Renaud, are coming for me according to instructions; they are the only human beings for whom the gate of the walls below has orders to open.

It is icy cold as we cross the Marble Bridge in the twilight to return to our home, and the moisture is gathering in clouds over the lake, as it does every night.

After supper we go on a man hunt in the dark, through the courts and rooms of the place. On the preceding nights we had observed through the transparent window-panes disturbing little lights which were promptly extinguished if we made any noise. These lights moved up and down the uninhabited galleries, some distance away, like fireflies. To-night's effort brings about the capture of three unknown men who with cutlasses and dark lanterns have climbed over the walls to pilfer in the imperial reserves. There are two Chinese and one European, a soldier of one of the allied nations. Not to make too much ado over it, we content ourselves with putting them out after cudgelling them well and boxing their ears.

V

Tuesday, October 23.

Last night there was a still harder frost, which covered the ground in the courtyard with small white crystals. This we discover during our regular morning exploration of the galleries and dependencies of the palace.

The former lodgings of the begging missionaries and the schoolrooms are overflowing with packing boxes containing reserve supplies of silk and tea. There is also a heap of old bronzes, vases, and incense-burners piled up to the height of a man.

But the church itself is the most extraordinary mine,—a regular Ali Baba's cave, quite filled. In addition to antiquities brought from the Violet City, the Empress had put there all the presents she received two years ago for her Jubilee. (And the line of mandarins who on that occasion brought presents to their sovereign was a league long and lasted an entire day.)

In the nave and side aisles the boxes and cases are piled to half the height of the columns. In spite of the confusion, in spite of the hasty pillaging of those who have preceded us,—Chinese, Japanese, German, and Russian soldiers,—a marvellous collection remains. The most enormous of the chests,—those beneath,—protected by their weight and by the mass of things on top of them, have not even been opened. The first to go were the innumerable smaller articles on top, most of them enclosed in glass cases or in yellow silk coverings, such as bunches of artificial flowers in agate, jade, coral, or lapis lazuli, pagodas and blue landscapes made of the feathers of the kingfisher marvellously utilized. Works of Chinese patience which have cost years of toil are now broken in bits by the stroke of a bayonet, while the glass which protected them is crackling under one's feet on the floor.

Imperial robes of heavy silk brocaded with gold dragons lie on the ground among cases of every description. We walk over them, we walk over carved ivories, over pearls and embroideries galore. There are bronzes a thousand years old, from the Empress's collection; there are screens which seem to have been carved and embroidered by supernatural beings, there are antique vases, cloisonné, crackle ware, lacquers. Certain of the boxes underneath, bearing the names of emperors who died a century ago, contain presents sent them from distant provinces, which no one has ever taken the trouble to open. The sacristy of this astonishing cathedral contains in a series of pasteboard boxes, all the sumptuous costumes for the actors in the Empress's theatre, with many fashionable headdresses of former times.

This church, so full of pagan riches, has kept its organ intact, although it has been silent for thirty years. My comrade mounts with me to the gallery to try the effect of some hymns of Bach and Händel under these vaultings, while the African chasseurs, up to their knees in ivories, silks, and court costumes, continue their task of clearing things out below.

About ten o'clock this morning I cross over to the opposite side of the Violet City to visit the Palace of Ancestors, which is in charge of our marines. This was the Holy of Holies, the Pantheon of dead emperors, a temple which was never even approached.

It is in a particularly shady spot; in front of the entrance gate are light but ornate triumphal arches of green, red, and gold lacquer, resting on frail supports, and mingling with the sombre branches of the trees. Enormous cedars and cypresses, twisted by age, shelter the marble monsters which crouch at the threshold and have given them a greenish hue.

Passing the first enclosure, we naturally find a second. The courts, always shaded by old trees, succeed one another in solemn magnificence. They are paved with large stones, between which grows a weed common in cemeteries; each one of the cedars and cypresses which cast its shadow here is surrounded by a marble circle and seems to spring from a bed of carving. A thick layer of thousands of pine needles continually falling from the branches, covers everything. Gigantic incense-burners of dull bronze, centuries old, rest on pedestals bearing emblems of death.

Everything here has an unprecedented stamp of antiquity and mystery. It is a unique place, haunted by the ghosts of the Chinese emperors.

On each side are secondary temples, whose walls of lacquer and gold have taken on with time the shades of old Cordova leather. They contain broken catafalques, emblems and objects pertaining to certain funeral rites.

It is all incomprehensible and terrible; one feels profoundly incapable of grasping the meaning of these forms and symbols.

At length, in the last court on a white marble terrace guarded by bronze roes, the Ancestors' Palace lifts its tarnished gold façade, surmounted by a roof of yellow lacquer.

It consists of one immense room, grand and gloomy, all in faded gold turning to coppery red. At the rear is a row of nine mysterious double doors, which are sealed with wax. In the centre are the tables on which the repasts for the ancestral shades were placed, and where, on the day the Yellow City was taken, our hungry soldiers rejoiced to find an unexpected meal set forth. At each extremity of this lofty room chimes and stringed instruments await the hour, which may never come again, when they shall make music for the Shades. There are long, horizontal zithers, grave in tone, which are supported by golden monsters with closed eyes; gigantic chimes, one of bells, the others of marble slabs and jade, suspended by gold chains and surmounted by great fantastic beasts spreading their golden wings toward the dusky gold ceiling.

There are also lacquered cupboards as big as houses, containing collections of old paintings, rolled on ebony or ivory sticks, and wrapped in imperial silks.

Some of these are marvellous, and are a revelation of Chinese art of which we of the Occident have no conception,—an art at least equal to our own, though profoundly unlike it. Portraits of emperors in silent revery, or hunting in the forest, portray wild places which give one a longing for primitive nature, for the unspoiled world of rocks and trees. Portraits of dead empresses painted in water-colors on faded silks recall the candid grace of the Italian Primitives,—portraits so pale, so colorless, as to seem like fleeting reflections of persons, yet showing a perfection of modelling attained with absolute simplicity, and with a look of concentration in the eye that makes you feel the likeness and enables you for one strange moment to live face to face with these princesses of the past who have slept for centuries in this splendid mausoleum. All these paintings were sacred, never seen or even suspected to exist by Europeans.

Other rolls, which when spread out on the pavement are six or eight metres long, represent processions, receptions at court, or lines of ambassadors; cavaliers, armies, banners; men of all kinds by the thousands, whose dress, embroideries, and arms, suggest that one should look at them with a magnifying glass. The whole history of Chinese costume and ceremonial is contained in these precious miniatures. We even find here the reception, by I know not what emperor, of an ambassador from Louis XIV.; small persons with very French faces are represented as though for exhibition at Versailles, with wigs after the fashion of Roi-Soleil.

The nine magnificent sealed doors at the back of the temple, shut off the altars of nine emperors. They were good enough to break the red wax seals for me and to destroy the fastenings at one of the forbidden entrances, so that I might penetrate into one of the sacred sanctuaries,—that of the great Emperor Kouang-Lu, who was in his glory at the beginning of the eighteenth century. A serjeant has orders to accompany me in this profanation, holding in his hand a lighted candle, which seems to burn reluctantly here in the light cold air of the tomb. The temple itself was quite dark, but here it was black night itself, and it seemed as though dirt and cinders had been thrown about; the dust that accumulates so endlessly in Pekin seems a sign of death and decay. Passing from daylight, however dim, to the light of one small candle that is lost in the shadows, one sees confusedly at first, and there is a momentary hesitation, especially if the place is startling in itself. I see before me a staircase rising to a sort of tabernacle, which seems to be full of artistic creations of some unknown kind.

At both right and left, closed by complicated locks, are some severe chests which I am permitted to examine. In their compartments and in their double secret bottoms the sovereign's imperial seals have been concealed by the hundreds,—heavy seals of onyx, jade, or gold struck off for every occasion of his life and in commemoration of all the acts of his reign; priceless relics which no one dared touch after his obsequies, and which have lain there for twice one hundred years.

I go up into the tabernacle and the serjeant holds his candle before the marvels there,—jade sceptres and vases, some of a peculiar and exquisite workmanship in both dark and light jade, in cloisonné on gold, or in plain solid gold. Behind the altar in an obscure position a grand figure which I had not perceived followed me with an oblique look that reached me through two curtains of yellow imperial silk, whose folds were black with dust. It is a pale portrait of the defunct Emperor,—a life-sized portrait, so obscure, as seen by the light of our single wretched candle, as to seem like the reflection of a ghost in a tarnished mirror. What a nameless sacrilege would our opening the chests where his treasures were hidden seem to this dead man, nay, even our presence in this most impenetrable of all places in an impenetrable city!

When everything is carefully closed again, when the red seals have been put back in place and the pale image of the Emperor returned to silence, to its customary shadows, I hasten to get away from the tomblike chill, to breathe the air again, to seek on the terrace some of the autumn sunshine which filters through the cedar branches.

I am going to take breakfast to-day with the French officers at the extreme north end of the imperial wood, at the Temple of the Silkworm. This, too, is an admirable old sanctuary, preceded by sumptuous courts with marble terraces and bronze vases. This Yellow City is a complete world of temples and palaces set in green. Up to last month the travellers who thought they were seeing China, and to whom all this remained closed, forbidden, could have no idea of the marvellous city opened to us by the war.

When I start back to my Palace of the Rotunda, about two o'clock, a burning sun is shining on the dark cedars and willows; one seeks shade as if it were summer, and the willows are losing many of their leaves. At the entrance to the Marble Bridge, not far from my gate, the two bodies in blue gowns which lie among the lotus are bathed in an ironical splendor of light.

After the soldiers on guard have closed the low postern by which one gains access to my high garden, I am again alone in the silence until the sun's rays, falling oblique and red upon my writing-table, announce the coming of the melancholy evening.

I am scarcely seated at my work before a friendly head, discreetly rubbed against my leg to attract my attention, announces the visit of the cat. I am not unprepared for this visit, for I now expect it every day.

An hour of ideal quiet goes by, broken only by two or three ravens' cries. Then I hear the noise of cavalry galloping over the stone pavements at the foot of my wall; it proves to be Field-Marshal von Waldersee, followed by an escort of soldiers with small flags at the tips of their spears. He is returning to the palace where he lives, not far from here, one of the most sumptuous of all the residences of the Empress. My eyes follow the cavalcade as it crosses the Marble Bridge, turns to the left, and is lost behind the trees. Then the silence returns, absolute as before.

From time to time I go out to walk on my high terrace, and always discover there something new. There are enormous tam-tams under my cedars, with which to call upon the gods; there are beds of yellow chrysanthemums and Indian-yellow carnations, upon which the frost has left a few flowers; there is a kind of daïs of marble and faience supporting an object quite indefinite at first sight,—one of the largest blocks of jade in the world, cut in imitation of an ocean wave with monsters struggling in the foam.

I visit some deserted kiosks,—still furnished with ebony thrones, divans, and yellow silk cushions,—which seem like little clandestine love nests. There is no doubt that the beautiful sovereign, passionate still, though aging, used to isolate herself here with her favorites among the imperial silks in these protecting shadows.

My only companion in my palace of dreams to-day is the big alabaster goddess robed in gold, who perpetually smiles upon broken vases and withered flowers; her temple, where the sun never enters, is always cold and grows dark before it should.

But now real night has come, and I begin to feel chilly. The sun, which in France is at its meridional apogee, is sinking; sinking here, a big red ball without light or heat, going down behind the Lake of the Lotus in a wintry mist.

The chill of the night comes on suddenly, giving me the sensation of an abrupt descent into a cave of ice and a furtive little feeling of anguish at being exiled so far from home.

I greet my two servants like friends when they come for me, bringing a cape for me to wear on the way back to the palace.

VI

Wednesday, October 24.

The same glorious sunshine in gallery, garden, and wood. Each day the work of our soldiers with their gangs of Chinese laborers goes on in the nave of the Cathedral; they carefully separate such treasures as have remained intact, or nearly so, from what is irreparably injured. There is a continual coming and going across our court of furniture and precious bronzes in hand-barrows; all that is taken out of the church is put in places not at present needed for our troops, to await its final transportation to the Ancestors' Palace, where it is to remain under lock and key.

We have seen so many of these magnificent things that we are satiated and worn with them. The most remarkable discoveries made from the depths of the oldest cases have ceased to astonish us; there is nothing now that we want for the decoration—oh, so fleeting—of our apartments; nothing is sufficiently beautiful for our Heliogabalean fancies. There will be no to-morrow, for the inventory must be finished within a few days, and then our long galleries will be parcelled out for officers' rooms and offices.

In the way of discoveries, we came this morning upon a pile of bodies,—the last defenders of the Imperial City, who fell all in a heap and have remained in positions indicative of extreme agony. The crows and the dogs have gone down into the ditch where they lie and have devoured eyes, chests, and intestines; there is no flesh left on their bones, and their red spinal columns show through their ragged raiment. Shoes are left, but no hair; Chinamen have evidently descended into the deep hole with the dogs and the crows, and have scalped the dead in order to make false queues.

To-day I leave the Palace of the North early and for all day, as I must go over to the European quarter to see our Minister at the Spanish legation, where he was taken in; he is still in bed, but convalescing so that at last I can make to him the communications which I undertook on behalf of the admiral.

For four days I have not been outside the red walls of the Imperial City, have not left our superb solitude. So when I find myself once more among the ugly gray ruins of the commonplace streets of the Tartar City, in everybody's Pekin, in the Pekin known to all travellers, I appreciate better the unique peculiarities of our great wood, of our lake, and of all our forbidden glories.

However, this city of the people seems less forlorn than on the day of my arrival in the wind and snow. The people are beginning to return, as I have been told; Pekin is being repopulated, the shops are opening, houses are rebuilding, and already a few humble and entertaining trades have been taken up along the streets, on tables, under tents, and under parasols. The warm sunshine of the Chinese autumn is the friend of many a poor wretch who has no fire.

VII THE TEMPLE OF THE LAMAS

The Temple of the Lamas, the oldest sanctuary in Pekin, and one of the most curious in the world, contains a profusion of marvellous work of the old Chinese gold and silver smiths, and a library of inestimable value.

This precious temple has seldom been seen, although it has been in existence for centuries. Before this year's European invasion, access to it was strictly forbidden to "outside barbarians," and even since the Allies have had possession of Pekin, very few have ever gone there. It is protected by its location in an angle of the Tartar wall in quite a lifeless part of the city whose different quarters are dying from century to century as old trees lose their branches one by one.

Going there to-day on a pilgrimage with the members of the French legation, we find that we are all there for the first time.

In order to reach it we first cross the eastern market-place, three or four kilometres through a sunless and desolate Pekin,—a Pekin that bears the marks of war and defeat, and where things are spread out for sale on the filth and ashes of the ground. Some matchless objects transmitted by one generation of mandarins to another are to be found among the rags and old iron; ancient palaces, as well as the houses of the poor, have emptied here some of their most astonishing contents; the sordid and the marvellous lie side by side,—here some pestilential rags, there a bibelot three thousand years old. Along the walls of the houses as far as one can see, the cast-off garments of dead men and women are hung. It is a place for the sale of extravagant clothing without end, opulent furs from Mongolia stolen from the rich, gay costumes of a courtesan, or magnificent heavy silk robes which belonged to great ladies who have disappeared. The Chinese populace, who have done a hundred times more than the invaders in the way of pillage, burning, and destruction in Pekin, the uniformly dirty populace, dressed in blue cotton, with squinting, evil eyes, swarm and crawl about, eagerly searching and raising a perfect cloud of microbes and dust. Ignoble scoundrels with long queues circulate amongst the crowd, offering robes of ermine or blue-fox, or admirable sables for a few piasters, in their eagerness to be rid of stolen goods.

As we approach the object of our journey it grows more quiet; the busy, crowded streets are gradually succeeded by streets that have perished of old age, where there are no passers; grass grows on the thresholds and behind abandoned walls; we see trees with branches knotted like the arms of the aged.

We dismount before a crumbling entrance which seems to open into a park which might be a ghosts' walk; and this is the entrance to the temple.

What sort of a reception shall we have in this mysterious enclosure? We do not know; and at first there is no one to receive us. But the chief of the Lamas soon appears, bowing, with his keys, and we follow him across the funereal park.

With a violet dress, a shaven head, and a face like old wax, at once smiling, frightened, and hostile, he conducts us to a second door, opening into an immense court paved with white stones, completely surrounded by the curious walls of the first buildings of the temple. Their foundations are massive, their roofs curved and forked, the walls themselves awe-inspiring on account of their size, and hermetically sealed; and all this is the color of ochre and rust, with golden reflections thrown on the high roofs by the evening sun.

The court is deserted, the grass grows between the paving-stones. On the white marble balustrades in front of the closed doors of these great temples are ranged "prayer-mills," which are conical thrones made of bronze, and engraved with secret symbols, which the priests turn and turn while murmuring words unintelligible to men of our day.

In old Asia, which is our ancestor, I have penetrated to the heart of ancient sanctuaries, trembling meanwhile with indefinable anguish before symbols whose meaning has been lost for centuries. This kind of anguish has never been so tinged with melancholy as to-night, standing before this row of silent "prayer-mills" in the cold, the wind, the solitude, the dilapidation of this court, with its white grass-grown pavement and mysterious yellow walls.

Young Lamas appear one after the other as noiselessly as shadows, and even Lama children, for they begin to instruct them quite young in the old rites no longer understood by any one.

They are young, but they have no appearance of youth; senility is upon them as well as a look of I know not what of mystical dulness; their gaze seems to have come from past centuries and to have lost its clearness on the way. Whether from poverty or renunciation, the yellow gowns that cover their thin bodies are faded and torn. Their faces and their dress, as well as their religion and their sanctuary, are covered, so to speak, with the ashes of time.

They are glad to show us all that we wish to see in their old buildings; and we begin with the study-rooms, where so many generations of obscure and unprogressive priests have been slowly formed.

By looking closely, it is plain that all these walls, now the color of the oxydized metal, were once covered with beautiful designs in lacquer and gilt; to harmonize them all into the present old-bronze shades has required an indefinite succession of burning summers and glacial winters, together with the dust,—the incessant dust blown across Pekin from the deserts of Mongolia.

Their study-rooms are very dark,—anything else would have surprised us; and this explains why their eyes protrude so from their drooping lids. Very dark these rooms are, but immense; sumptuous still, in spite of their neglect, and conceived on a grand scale, as are all the monuments of this city, which was in its day the most magnificent in the world. The high ceilings are supported by lacquered columns. There are small seats for the students, and carved desks by the hundred, all arranged in rows and worn and defaced by long use. Gods in golden robes are seated in the corners. The wall hangings of priceless old work represent the joys of Nirvana. The libraries are overflowing with old manuscripts, some in the form of books, and others in great rolls wrapped up in colored silks.

We are shown into the first temple, which, as soon as the door is opened, shines with a golden glow,—the glow of gold used discreetly, and with the warm, reddish tones which lacquer takes on in the course of centuries. There are three golden altars, on which are enthroned in the midst of a pleiad of small golden gods three great ones, with downcast eyes. The straight stems of the gold flowers standing in gold vases in front of the altars are of archaic stiffness. The repetition, the persistent multiplication of the same objects, attitudes, and faces, is one of the characteristics of the unchanging art of pagodas. As is the case with all the temples of the past, there is here no opening for the light; only the light that comes in through the half-opened doors illumines from below the smile of the great seated idols, and shows dimly the decorations of the ceiling. Nothing has been touched, nothing taken away, not even the admirable cloisonné vases where sticks of incense are burning,—evidently this place has been ignored.

Behind this temple, behind its dusty dependencies, in which the tortures of the Buddhist hell are depicted, the Lamas conduct us to a second court, paved in white stones, similar in every way to the first; the same dilapidation, the same solitude, the same coppery-yellow walls.

After this second court comes another temple, identical with the first, so much so that one wonders if one is not the victim of an illusion; the same figures, the same smiles, the same gold bouquets in vases of gold,—a patient and servile reproduction of the same magnificence.

After this second temple there is a third court, and a third temple exactly like the two others. But the sun is now lower, and lights only the extreme tips of the faience roofs and the thousands of small monsters of yellow enamel which seem to be chasing one another over the tiling. The wind increases, and we shiver with cold. The pigeons in the carved cornice begin to seek their nests, and the silent owls wake up and begin to fly about.

As we expected, this last temple—possibly the oldest, certainly the most dilapidated—is only a repetition of the other two, save for an idol in the centre, which, instead of being seated and life-sized, is colossal and standing. The gold ceiling rises from about half the height of the statue into a cupola, also gilded, which forms a sort of box enclosing the upper part of the figure. To see the face one must go close to the altars and look up between the rigid flowers and the incense-burners. It then looks like a Titanic mummy in its case, with a downcast look that makes one nervous. But on looking steadily, it exercises a sort of spell; one is hypnotized and held by that smile so impartially bestowed upon all this entourage of dying splendor, gold, dust, cold, twilight, ruins, silence.

VIII CONFUCIUS

There was still a half-hour of sunshine after we left the ghostly Lamas, so we went to pay a call on Confucius, who dwells in the same quarter,—the same necropolis, one might say,—in an abandonment equally depressing.

The big worm-eaten door slips off its hinges and falls down as we attempt to enter, and an owl who was asleep there takes fright and flies away. Behold us in a sort of mortuary wood, walking over the brown autumn grass.

A triumphal arch is the first thing we come across, built to pay homage to some great Chinese thinker. It is of a charming design, although very peculiar, with three little bell-towers of yellow enamel, which crown the whole, their curved roofs decorated with monsters at each one of the corners.

It stands there like some precious bibelot lost among the ruins. Its freshness is surprising where all else is so dilapidated. One realizes its great age from the archaic nature of its details; but it is made of such enduring materials that the wear and tear of centuries in this dry climate has not affected it. The base is white marble, the rest is of faience,—faience both yellow and green, with lotus leaves, clouds, and chimæras in bold relief.

Farther on is a large rotunda which gives evidence of extreme antiquity; this appears to be the color of dirt or ashes, and is surrounded by a moat where the lotus and the reeds are dying. This is a retreat where wise men may come to meditate upon the vanities of life; the object of the moat is to isolate it and make it more quiet.

It is reached by an arched bridge of marble, with railings that vaguely suggest a succession of animals' heads. Inside, it is deserted, abandoned, crumbling away, and the gold ceiling is full of birds' nests. A really magnificent desk is left, with an arm-chair and a table. It seems as though a kind of fine clay had been scattered by handfuls over everything; the ground is covered with it too, so that one's feet sink into it and one's steps are muffled. We soon discover that there is still a carpet underneath, and that it is really nothing but dust which has been accumulating for centuries,—the thick and ever-present dust which the Mongolian winds blow across Pekin.

After a short walk under the old trees we reach the temple itself, which is preceded by a court surrounded by tall marble pillars. This looks exactly like a cemetery, and yet there are no dead lying under these stele, which are there merely to glorify the memory of the departed. Philosophers who in bygone centuries made this region illustrious by their presence and by their dreams, profound thinkers, lost to us forever, have their names as well as some few of their most transcendent utterances, perpetuated on these stele.

On either side of the white steps leading to the sanctuary, blocks of marble are arranged in the form of a tam-tam. These are so old as to make one's head swim; and upon them maxims intelligible only to a few erudite mandarins have been written in primitive Chinese characters, in letters contemporary with and sisters to the hieroglyphs of Egypt.

This is the temple of disinterestedness, of abstract thought, and of cold speculation. One is struck at once by its absolute simplicity, for which, up to this point, nothing in China has prepared us. Very large, very high as to ceilings, very grand and of a uniform blood-red color, it is magnificently empty and supremely quiet. The columns and walls are red, with a few discreet decorations in gold, dimmed by time and dust. In the centre is a bouquet of gigantic lotus in a colossal vase, and that is all. After the profusion, the debauch of monsters and idols, the multiplication of human and animal forms in the usual Chinese pagoda, this absence of figures of any sort is a comfort and a relief.

In the niches all along the wall there are stele, red like the rest of the place, and consecrated to the memory of persons still more eminent than those of the entrance court, with quotations from their writings carved upon them. The stele of Confucius himself, which is larger than the others, and has longer quotations, occupies the position of honor in the centre of this severe Pantheon, and is placed on a kind of altar.

Properly speaking, this is not a temple; it is not a place for prayer or service. It is rather an academy, a meeting-place for calm, philosophic discussion. In spite of its dust and its abandoned air, it seems that newly elected members of the Academy of Pekin (which is even more than our own the conservator of form and ceremony, I am assured) are still bound to give a conference here.

Besides various maxims of renunciation and wisdom written from top to bottom of the stele, Confucius has left to this sanctuary certain thoughts on literature which have been engraved in letters of gold in such a way as to form pictures hung on the walls.

Here is one which I transcribe for young western scholars who are preoccupied with classification and inquiry. They will find in it a reply twice two thousand years old to one of their favorite questions: "The literature of the future will be the literature of compassion."

It is almost five o'clock when the gloomy, red, autumn sun goes down behind great China on Europe's side, and we leave the temples and the grove behind. I separate from my companions, for they live in the legation quarter in the southern part of the Tartar City, while I go to the Imperial City, far from here.

I have no idea how to get out of this dead region, all new to me, where we have spent the day, and through the lonely labyrinthine streets of Pekin. I have as a guide a "mafou," who has been lent to me, and I only know that I have more than a mile to go before reaching my sumptuous, deserted quarters.

My companions gone, I walk for a few moments in the silent old uninhabited streets before reaching one of the long, broad avenues where blue cotton dresses and long-queued yellow faces begin to appear. There is an interminable row of low houses, wretched, gray things, on either side of the street, where the tramp of horses raises the black friable dust in infectious clouds.

The street is so wide and the houses so low that almost the whole of the twilight sky is visible above our heads; and so suddenly does the cold come on after sunset that in a moment we freeze.

The crowds are dense about the food-shops, and the air is fetid in the neighborhood of the butchers, where dog-meat and roasted grasshoppers are sold. But what good nature in all these people of the streets, who on the day after battle and bombardment permit me to pass without so much as an evil look! What could I do, with my borrowed "mafou" and my revolver, if my appearance did not happen to please them?

For a time after this we are alone in desolate, ruined quarters of the town. According to the position of the pale, setting sun, it seems to me that we are on the right track; but if my "mafou," who speaks nothing but Chinese, has not understood me, I shall be in a predicament.

The return journey in the cold seems interminable to me. At last, however, the artificial mountain of the imperial park is silhouetted in gray on the sky ahead of us, with the little faience kiosks and the twisted trees grouping themselves like scenes painted on lacquer. We reach one of the yellow enamelled gates of the blood-red wall surrounding the Imperial City, where two sentinels of the allied armies present arms. From here I know my way, I am at home; so I dismiss my guide and proceed alone to the Yellow City, from which at this hour no one is allowed to depart.

The Imperial, the Yellow, the Forbidden City, encircled by its own terrible walls in the very heart of great Pekin, with its Babylonian environment, is a park rather than a city, a wood of venerable trees,—sombre cypresses and cedars,—several leagues in circumference. Some ancient temples peep through the branches, and several modern palaces built according to the fancies of the Empress regent. This great forest, to which I return to-night as if it were my home, has at no former period of history been known to foreigners; even ambassadors have never passed its gates; until recently it has been absolutely inaccessible and profoundly unknown to Europeans.

This Yellow City surrounds and protects with its tranquil shadows the still more mysterious Violet City, the residence of the Son of Heaven, which occupies a commanding square in the centre of it, protected by moats and double ramparts.

What silence reigns here at this hour! What a lugubrious region it is! Death hovers over these paths where formerly princesses passed in their palanquins and empresses with their silk-robed followers. Now that the usual inhabitants have fled and Occidental barbarians have taken their places, one meets no one in the woods, unless it be an occasional patrol or a few soldiers of one nation or another, and only the sentinels' step is heard before palace or temple, or the cries of the crows and the barking of dogs about the dead.

I have to cross a region filled with trees, nothing but trees,—trees of a truly Chinese contour, whose aspect is in itself quite sufficient to give one the sharp realization of exile; the road goes on under the deep shadow of the branches that turn the twilight into night. Belated magpies are hopping about on the withered grass, and the crows, too, their croakings exaggerated by the cold and the silence. At the end of a quarter of an hour a corner of the Violet City appears, just at a turn of the road. She slowly reveals herself, silent, closed, like a colossal tomb. Her long, straight walls are lost in the confusion and obscurity of the distance. As I draw nearer to her the silence seems to be intensified, as though it grew as she broods over it.

Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment The Executive Palace of the Emperor in the Forbidden City

One corner of the Lake of the Lotus begins to come out like a bit of mirror placed among the reeds to receive the last reflections of the sky. I must pass along its edges in front of the Island of Jade, which is approached by a marble bridge; and I know in advance, because I have seen it daily, the horrible grimace in store for me from the two monsters who have guarded the bridge for centuries.

At length I emerge from the shadow and oppression of the trees into open space with the clear sky overhead, leaving the lake behind me. The first stars are appearing, indicating another of the nights that pass here in an excess of solitude and silence, with only an occasional gunshot to break the tragic calm of wood and palace.

The Lake of the Lotus, which during the season of flowers must be the marvellous field of pink blossoms described by the poets of China, is now, at the end of October, only a melancholy swamp covered with brown leaves, from which at this hour a wintry mist rises that hangs like a cloud over the dead reeds.

My dwelling is on the other side of the lake; and now I have reached the Marble Bridge which spans it with a beautiful curve,—a curve that stands out white in spite of the darkness.

At this point a corpse-like smell greets my nostrils. For a week I have known whence it comes,—from a person in a blue gown lying with outspread arms, face downward, on the slimy shore; and ten steps farther on his comrade is lying in the grass.

As soon as I cross the beautiful lonely Marble Bridge through the pale cloud that hangs over the water I shall be almost home. At my left is a faience gateway guarded by two German sentinels,—two living beings whom I shall not be sorry to see,—who will salute me in automatic unison; this will be at the entrance to the garden where Field-Marshal von Waldersee resides, in one of the Empress's palaces.

Two hundred metres farther on, after passing more gates and more ruins, I shall come to a fresh opening in an old wall, which will be my entrance, guarded by one of our own men,—an African chasseur. Another of the Empress's palaces is there concealed by its surroundings,—a frail palace, almost wholly enclosed in glass. Once there, I push open a glass door decorated with pink lotus flowers, and find again my nightly fairyland, where priceless porcelains, cloisonné, and lacquer stand about in profusion on the yellow carpets under the wonderfully carved arches of ebony.

IX

It is dark when I reach my dwelling-place. The fires are already lighted in the subterranean furnaces, and a soft heat rises through the thick yellow carpets. We feel much at home and quite comfortable now in this palace, which at first seemed so dreary to us.

I dine, as usual, at a small ebony table, which is lost in the long gallery so dark at either end, in company with my comrade, Captain C., who has discovered new and wonderful treasures during the day, which he has spread out, that we may enjoy them for at least an evening.

First, there is a throne of a style unknown to us; some screens of colossal size that rest in ebony sockets, on which shining birds are battling with monkeys amid the flowers of a dream. Candelabra, which have remained in their silk cases since the seventeenth century, now hang from the arches above our heads,—a shower of pearls and enamel,—and many other indescribable things added to-day to our wealth of articles of antique art.

It is the last time we shall be able to enjoy our gallery in its completeness, for to-morrow most of these objects are to be labelled and sent off with the reserve stock. Retaining one salon for the general, who is to winter here, the rest of this wing of the palace is to be cut up by light partitions into lodgings and offices for the staff. This work will be done under the direction of Captain C., who is chief architect and supervisor, whilst I, a passing guest, will have only a consulting voice.

As this evening marks the last chapter of our imperial phantasmagoria, we sit up later than usual. For this once we are childish enough to array ourselves in sumptuous Asiatic garments, then we throw ourselves down on the cushions and call opium—so favorable to weary and blasé imaginations such as ours have unfortunately begun to be—to our aid. Alas! to be alone in this palace would have seemed magical enough to us a few years ago without the aid of any avatar.

The opium, needless to say, is of exquisite quality; its fumes, rising in rapid little spirals, soon make the air sweet and heavy. It quickly brings to us the ecstasy, the forgetfulness, the relief, the youthful lightness so dear to the Chinese.

There is absolute silence without; absolute silence and deserted courts, where all is cold and black. The gallery grows warm, the heat of the furnace is heavy, for these walls of glass and paper, so frail as a protection against surprises from without, form rooms almost hermetically sealed and propitious to the intoxication that comes from perfumes.

Stretched out upon the silken cushions, we gaze at the receding ceiling, at the row of arches so elaborately carved into lacework, from which the lanterns with the dangling pearls are suspended. Chimæras of gold stand out from the thick folds of the green or yellow silks. High screens of cloisonné, lacquer, or ebony, the great luxury of China, shut off the corners, forming luxurious nooks filled with jars, bronzes, and monsters with eyes of jade,—eyes which squintingly follow you.

Absolute silence, except that from a distance one of those shots is heard which never fails to mark the torpor of the night, or a cry of distress or alarm; skirmishes between Europeans in the posts and thieving Chinamen; sentinels afraid of the dead or of the night shooting at a shadow.

In the foreground, which is lighted by one lamp, the only luminous things whose design and color are engraved upon our already fixed gaze are four gigantic incense-burners—hieratic in form, and made of an adorable blue cloisonné—resting on gold elephants. They stand out against a background of black lacquer traversed by flying birds, whose plumage is made of different kinds of mother-of-pearl. No doubt our lamp is going out, for, with the exception of these nearer things, we scarcely see the magnificence of the place until the outline of some rare vase five hundred years old, the reflection of a piece of inimitable silk, or the brilliancy of some bit of enamel recalls it to our memory.

The fumes of the opium keep us awake until very late, in a state of mind that is both lucid and at the same time confused. We have never until now understood Chinese art; it is revealed to us for the first time to-night. In the beginning we were ignorant, as is all the world, of its almost terrible grandeur until we saw the Imperial City and the walled palace of the Son of Heaven; now at this nocturnal hour, amid the fragrant fumes that rise in clouds in our over-heated gallery, our impressions of the big sombre temples, of the yellow enamelled roofs crowning the Titanic buildings that rise above terraces of marble, are exalted above mere captivated admiration to respect and awe.

In the thousand details of its embroidery and carvings which surround us in such profusion, we learn how skilful and how exact this art is in rendering the grace of flowers, exaggerating their superb and languishing poses and their deep or deliciously pale colorings; then in order to make clear the cruelty of every kind of living thing, down to dragons and butterflies, they place claws, horns, terrible smiles, and leering eyes upon them! They are right; these embroideries on our cushions are roses, lotus flowers, chrysanthemums! As for the insects, the scarabs, the flies, and the moths, they are just like those horrid things painted in gold relief on our court fans.

When we arrive at that special form of physical prostration which sets the mind free (disengages the astral body, they say at Benares), everything in the palace, as well as in the outside world, seems easy and amusing. We congratulate ourselves upon having come to live in the Yellow City at so unique a period in the history of China, at a moment when everything is free, and we are left almost alone to gratify our whims and curiosity. Life seems to hold to-morrows filled with new and interesting circumstances. In our conversation we find words, formulas, images, to express the inexpressible, the things that have never been said. The hopelessness, the misery that one carries about like the weight on a convict's leg, is incontestably lessened; and as to the small annoyances of the moment, the little pin-pricks, they exist no longer. For example, when we see through the glass gallery the pale light of a moving lantern in a distant part of our palace, we say without the slightest feeling of disturbance: "More thieves! They must see us. We'll hunt them down to-morrow!"

And it seems of no consequence, even comfortable to us, that our cushions and our imperial silks are shut off from the cold and the horrors by nothing but panes of glass.

X

Thursday, October 25.

I have worked all day, with only my cat for company, in the solitude of the Rotunda Palace that I deserted yesterday.

At the hour when the red sun is setting behind the Lake of the Lotus my two servants come as usual to get me. But this time, after crossing the Marble Bridge, we pass the turn which leads to my palace, for I have to pay a visit to Monsignor Favier, the Bishop of Pekin, who lives in our vicinity, outside yet quite near the Imperial City.

It is twilight by the time we reach the "Catholic Concession," where the missionaries and their little band of yellow followers endured the stress of a long siege. The cathedral, riddled with balls, has a vague look against the dark sky; and it is so dusty that we see as through a fog this newly built cathedral, the one the Empress paid for in place of the one she took for a storehouse.

Monsignor Favier, the head of the French missions, has lived in Pekin for forty years, has enjoyed for a long time the favor of the sovereigns, and was the first to foresee and denounce the Boxer peril. In spite of the temporary blow to his work, he is still a power in China, where the title of Viceroy was at one time conferred upon him.

The white-walled room where he receives me, lately pierced by a cannon-ball, contains some precious Chinese bibelots, whose presence here astonishes every one at first. He collected them in other days, and is selling them now in order to be able to assist several thousand hungry people driven by the war into his church.

The bishop is a tall man, with fine, regular features, and eyes that show shrewdness and energy. He must resemble in looks, as well as in his determined will, those bishops of the Middle Ages who went on Crusades to the Holy Land. It is only since the outbreak of hostilities against the Christians that he has resumed the priests' cloth and cut off his long Chinese queue. Permission to wear the queue and the Mandarins' garb was one of the greatest and most subversive favors accorded the Lazarists by the Celestial emperors.