*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49121 ***

THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN

[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_
EMPEROR'S THRONE IN THE FORBIDDEN CITY]




  The Last Days of Pekin

  _Translated from the French of
  Pierre Loti_

  _By_
  MYRTA L. JONES

  _Illustrated from Photographs, and Drawings
  by Jessie B. Jones_

  Boston
  Little, Brown, and Company
  1902




  _Copyright, 1902_,
  BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

  _All rights reserved_

  Published November, 1902


  UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON
  AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.




DEDICATION

  TO
  VICE-ADMIRAL POTTIER
  _Commander-in-Chief of the Squadron of the Far East_

  ADMIRAL:--

The notes which I sent to the "Figaro" from China are to be collected
in a volume which will be published in Paris before my return, so that
it will be impossible for me to look it over. I am therefore a little
uneasy as to how such a collection may turn out; it will doubtless
contain much repetition. Yet I beg that you will accept this dedication
as a token of the profound and affectionate respect of your first
aide-de-camp. You will be more indulgent than any one else, because
you know under what conditions it was written,--from day to day during
a painful campaign in the midst of the continual excitement of life
aboard ship.

I have restricted myself to noting the things which have come under my
own observation while undertaking the missions to which you assigned
me, and in the course of the journey which you allowed me to take into
a certain part of China hitherto almost unknown.

When we reached the Yellow Sea, Pekin had been taken, and the war was
over. I could, therefore, only observe our soldiers during the period
of peaceful occupation. Under these circumstances I have seen them
always kind and almost fraternal in manner toward the humblest of the
Chinese. May my book contribute its small part toward destroying the
shameful stories published against them!

Perhaps you may reproach me, Admiral, for saying almost nothing of
the sailors who remained on our ships, who were constantly toiling
with never a murmur or a loss of courage during our long and dangerous
sojourn in the waters of Petchili. Poor sequestered beings living
between steel walls! They did not have, to sustain them, as their
superiors had, any of the responsibilities which make up the interest
of life, or the stimulus that comes from having to decide serious
questions. They knew nothing, they saw nothing, not even the sinister
coast in the distance. In spite of the heat of a Chinese summer, fires
were burning day and night in their stifling quarters; they lived
bathed in a moist heat, dripping with perspiration, coming out only for
exhausting drill-work in small boats, in bad weather, and often in the
dead of night and on boisterous seas.

One needs but a glance at their thin pale faces now, to understand how
difficult their obscure rôle has been.

But if I had told of the monotony of their hardships, and of their
silent unending devotion, no one would have had the patience to read me.

  PIERRE LOTI.




TRANSLATOR'S NOTE


The account of his experiences in China, published by Pierre Loti under
the title of "Les Derniers Jours de Pékin," first appeared in the form
of letters written to the "Figaro" from China, from notes taken on the
spot during those memorable days when he was serving on board one of
the French warships.

Loti has written little of late, having had no end of trouble with his
naval superiors, through jealousy, it is said, of his literary success.

As Julian Viaud, Loti ranks in the navy as "Lieutenant de vaisseau."
Some time ago he was abruptly retired. He took his case before the
"Conseil d'état," which finally gave a verdict in his favor, and
he secured the nomination of officier d'ordonnance at the time of
the Chinese difficulties, during which he resumed his literary work
neglected in a measure on account of the tribulations connected with
his naval career.

His account of his experiences in China is very personal and very
national, yet, exotic that it is, it presents such a vivid picture of
certain phases of China that it is of value as the contribution of an
observer possessing sympathy, imagination, and knowledge, as well as
the literary sense, to the history of our own times.

  MYRTA L. JONES.




CONTENTS


                                          PAGE

     I. ARRIVAL IN THE YELLOW SEA            1
    II. AT NING-HIA                          9
   III. ON THE WAY TO PEKIN                 18
    IV. IN THE IMPERIAL CITY                81
     V. RETURN TO NING-HIA                 196
    VI. PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME                202
   VII. THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS          226
  VIII. THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN             274




ILLUSTRATIONS


  Emperor's Throne in the Forbidden City          _Frontispiece_
  French Cavalry Orderly with Despatches        _Facing Page_ 11
  Transports on the Pei-Ho                            "       21
  The Great Wall surrounding the Outer City
    of Pekin                                          "       57
  Chen-Mun Gate to Pekin                              "       73
  The Temple of Heaven                                "       79
  Marble Bridge over Moat before Southern
    Gate of the Forbidden City                        "       85
  The Big Tower or Wall Entrance of Tartar
    City                                              "      103
  The Executive Palace of the Emperor in
    the Forbidden City                                "      145
  An Imperial Palace                                  "      167
  Priceless Porcelains and Bronzes in the
    Third Palace, Forbidden City                      "      181
  The Mouth of the Pei-Ho                             "      202
  Chinese Village Carts, the only Vehicle used
    in the North of China                             "      230
  Non-commissioned Officers and Men of
    French Artillery and Marines                      "      235
  Chinese Peasants cultivating Rice Fields
    with Native Plow                                  "      246
  The Lake and Southern View of Summer
    Palace                                            "      275




The Last Days of Pekin


I

THE ARRIVAL IN THE YELLOW SEA


  MONDAY, Sept. 24, 1900.

Very early morning, on a calm sea and under a starry sky. A light on
the eastern horizon shows that day is about to break, yet it is still
night. The air is soft and moist.--Is it the summer of the North, or
the winter of a warm climate? Nothing in sight on any side, no land, no
light, no sail, no indication of any place--just a marine solitude in
ideal weather and in the mystery of the wavering dawn.

Like a leviathan which conceals itself in order to surprise, the big
iron-clad advances silently with determined slowness, its engines
barely revolving.

It has just covered five thousand miles almost without pausing to
breathe, constantly making forty-eight turns of the screw to a minute,
accomplishing without stopping and without damage of any sort, and
without much wear and tear of its substantial machinery, the longest
journey, at the highest rate of sustained speed, that a monster of
its size has ever undertaken, thus defeating in this important test
ships reputed to be faster, and which at first sight might be thought
superior in speed.

This morning it has arrived at the end of its journey, it is about to
reach a part of the world whose name but yesterday was unknown, but
toward which the eyes of Europe are now turning. This sea, where the
morning light is calmly breaking, is the Yellow Sea, it is the gulf of
Petchili, from which one reaches Pekin. An immense fighting squadron
must already be assembled very near us, although as yet nothing
indicates its vicinity.

We have been two or three days crossing this Yellow Sea in beautiful
September weather. Yesterday and the day before, junks with sails of
matting have crossed our route, on their way to Corea; shores and
islands more or less distant have appeared, but at the present moment
the entire circle of the horizon is empty.

Since midnight we have been moving slowly, in order that our expected
arrival in the midst of this fleet of ships--which is to be attended
with obligatory military pomp--should not take place at too early an
hour.

       *       *       *       *       *

Five o'clock. Out of the semi-obscurity sounds the music of the
reveille, the gay trumpeting, which each morning arouses the sailors.
It is earlier than usual, so that there may be ample time to perform
the toilet of the iron-clad, which has lost some of its freshness
during forty-five days at sea. We still see nothing but empty space,
and yet the lookout, from his post aloft, reports black smoke on the
horizon. This small cloud of coal smoke, which from below looks like
nothing, betokens a formidable presence; it is produced by great steel
ships, it is the breath of this unprecedented squadron which we are
about to join.

Before the ship's toilet comes that of the crew. Barefooted and
bare-chested, the sailors splash in the water in the dawning light.
In spite of continual hard work, they are no more tired than the ship
that carries them. The _Redoutable_ is, of all the ships that departed
so suddenly, the only one which has had neither death nor sickness on
board, even in crossing the Red Sea.

Now the sun has risen clear above the horizon, a yellow disk which
slowly climbs upward from behind the quiet waters. For us, who have
just left equatorial regions, this rising, luminous as it is, has I
know not what of melancholy and of dulness, which savors of autumn and
a northern climate. Really in two or three days the sun has changed.
Now it no longer burns, it is no longer dangerous, we cease to fear it.

In front of us, from out the cloud of coal smoke, far-off objects begin
to emerge, perceptible only to the eye of the mariner; a forest of
spears, one should say, planted away off at the end of space, almost
beyond the range of vision. We know what they are,--the giant chimneys,
the heavy fighting masts, the terrible paraphernalia of warfare, which,
with the smoke, reveal from afar the modern squadron. When our morning
cleaning is over, when everything has been washed with buckets of sea
water, the _Redoutable_ increases her speed to the average of eleven
and a half knots an hour, which she has maintained since her departure
from France. And while the sailors are busy making the brass and copper
shine, she begins again to trace her deep furrow through the tranquil
waters.

Objects on the smoky horizon line begin to stand forth and take
shape. Below the innumerable masts, masses of every form and color
are distinguishable. These are the ships themselves. Between the calm
water and the pale sky lies the whole terrible company, an assemblage
of strange monsters, some white and yellow, others white and black,
others the color of slime or of fog, in order to make them less easily
distinguishable. Their backs are humped and their sides half submerged
and hidden like big uneasy turtles. Their structures vary according
to the conceptions of different persons in regard to engines of
destruction, but all alike breathe forth horrible coal smoke, which
dulls the morning light.

No more of the coast of China is visible than if we were a thousand
leagues away or than if it did not exist. Yet we are close to Taku,
the meeting-place toward which for so many days our minds have been
bent. It is China, close by although invisible, which attracts by its
nearness this herd of beasts of prey, and which keeps them as immovable
as fallow deer at bay, at this precise point on the seas, until some
one speaks the word.

The water, here where it is less deep, has lost its beautiful blue,
to which we have so long been accustomed, and has become troubled and
yellow, and the sky, although cloudless, is decidedly melancholy. Our
first impression of this whole scene, of which we shall undoubtedly for
a long time form a part, is one of sadness.

But now as we draw nearer and the sun rises there is a change, and
the beautiful shining iron-clads with their many-colored flags begin
to stand out. It is indeed a remarkable squadron that here represents
Europe,--Europe armed against gloomy old China. It occupies an infinite
amount of space, the whole horizon seems crowded with ships, and
small boats--little steam tugs--hurry like busy people among the big
motionless vessels.

Now cannon on all sides begin a military welcome for our admiral,
beneath the heavy curtain of black smoke; the gay light smoke from
powder blossoms like sheaves and goes off in white masses, while up
and down the iron masts the tricolor rises and falls in our honor.
Everywhere trumpets sound, foreign bands play our Marseillaise,--one
is more or less intoxicated with this ceremonial, always the same yet
always superb, which here borrows an unaccustomed magnificence on
account of the display of the fleet.

And now the sun is at last awake and shining, adding to the day of our
arrival a last illusion of midsummer heat, in this country of extreme
seasons; in two months' time it will begin to freeze up for a long
winter.

       *       *       *       *       *

When evening comes, our eyes, which will weary of it soon enough,
are feasted upon a grand fairy-like spectacle, given for us by the
squadron. Suddenly electric lights appear on all sides, white, or
green, or red, twinkling and sparkling in a dazzling manner; the big
ships, by means of a play of lights, converse with one another, and the
water reflects thousands of signals, thousands of lights, while the
rockets race for the horizon or pass through the sky like delirious
comets. One forgets all that breeds death and destruction in this
phantasmagoria, and for the moment feels oneself in the midst of a
great city, with towers, minarets, palaces, improvised in this part of
the world especially for this extravagant nocturnal celebration.


  September 25.

It is only the next day and yet everything is different. A breeze came
up in the morning,--hardly a breeze, just enough to spread over the sea
big vague plumes of smoke. Already furrows are being made in this open
and not very deep roadstead, and the small boats, continually going and
coming, bob up and down bathed in spray.

A ship with the German colors appears upon the horizon just as we
appeared yesterday; it is immediately recognized as the _Herta_,
bringing Field-Marshal von Waldersee, the last one of the military
commanders expected at this meeting-place of the Allies. The salutes
that yesterday were for us, begin anew for him, the whole magnificent
ceremony is repeated. Again the cannon give forth clouds of smoke,
mingling tufts of white with the denser variety, and the national air
of Germany is taken up by all the bands, and borne on the rising wind.

The wind whistles stronger, stronger and colder; a bad autumn wind,
that plays about the whalers and the tugs, which yesterday circulated
readily among the various groups of the squadron.

It presages difficult days for us, for in this uncertain harbor, which
in an hour's time becomes dangerous, we shall have to land thousands of
soldiers sent from France and thousands of tons of war supplies. Many
people and many things must be moved over this rough water, in barges
or in small boats, in the cold and even in the night, and must be taken
to Taku across the river's changing bar.

To organize this long and perilous undertaking is to be our task--that
of the marines--during the first few months, an austere, exhausting,
and obscure rôle without apparent glory.




II

AT NING-HIA


  Oct. 3, 1900.

In the gulf of Petchili on the beach at Ning-Hia, lighted by the rising
sun. Here are sloops, tugs, whalers, junks, their prows in the sand,
landing soldiers and war supplies at the foot of an immense fort whose
guns are silent. On this shore there is a confusion and a babel such as
has been seen in no other epoch of history. From these boats where so
many people are disembarking, float pell-mell all the flags of Europe.

The shore is wooded with birches and willows, and in the distance
mountains with strange outlines raise their peaks to the clear sky.
There are only northern trees, showing that the winters in this country
are cold, and yet the morning sun is already burning; the far-off peaks
are magnificently violet, the sun shines as in Provence. Standing about
among the sacks of earth collected for the erection of hasty defences,
are all kinds of people. There are Cossacks, Austrians, Germans,
English midshipmen, alongside of our armed sailors; little Japanese
soldiers, with a surprisingly good military bearing in their new
European uniforms; fair ladies of the Russian Red-Cross Society, busy
unpacking material for the ambulances; and Bersaglieri from Naples, who
have put their cock-feathers onto colonial caps.

There is something about these mountains in this sunshine, in this
limpid air, that recalls the shores of the Mediterranean on autumn
mornings. Not far away an old gray structure rises among the trees,
twisted, crooked, bristling with dragons and monsters. It is a pagoda.
The interminable line of ramparts which winds about and finally loses
itself behind the summits of the mountains in the distance, is the
Great Wall of China, which forms the boundary of Manchuria.

The soldiers who disembark barefooted in the sand, gaily calling out to
one another in all tongues, seem to be the sort who are easily amused.
What they are doing to-day is called "a peaceful capture," and it
seems more like a celebration of universal fusion, of universal peace,
yet not far from here, in the vicinity of Tien-Tsin and of Pekin, the
country is in ruins and is strewn with the dead.

[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_
FRENCH CAVALRY ORDERLY WITH DESPATCHES]

The necessity for occupying Ning-Hia, of holding it as a base of
supplies, had been impressed upon the admirals of the international
squadron, and day before yesterday all the ships had prepared for a
struggle, knowing that the forts on the shore were well armed; but
the Chinese who lived here, warned by an official that a formidable
company of cuirassiers would appear at daybreak, preferred to leave the
place--so we found it deserted on our arrival.

The fort which overlooks the shore and which forms the terminus of the
Great Wall at its sea end, has been declared international.

The flags of the seven allied nations float there together,
arranged in alphabetical order at the end of long poles guarded by
pickets,--Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Russia.

The other forts scattered over the surrounding heights have been
apportioned, the one belonging to France being situated about a mile
from the shore. It is reached by a dusty road, bordered with birches
and frail willows, which crosses gardens and orchards turning brown at
the same season as our own,--gardens exactly like ours, with modest
rows of cabbages and pumpkins and long lines of lettuce. The little
wooden houses too, scattered here and there among the trees, resemble
those of our villages, with red tiled roofs, vines trained in garlands,
and little beds of zinnias, asters, and chrysanthemums. It is a
country which should be peaceful, happy, yet which has in two days'
time become depopulated through fear of the approach of the invaders
from Europe.

On this fresh October morning the sailors and soldiers of all nations
are hurrying and skurrying along the shaded road that leads to the
French fort, seeking the pleasures of discovery; amusing themselves in
a conquered land, catching chickens and pilfering salads and pears from
the gardens. The Russians are taking down the Buddhas and gilded vases
from a pagoda. The English are driving with sticks the cattle captured
in the fields. The Dalmatians and the Japanese--fast friends of an
hour's standing--are making their toilet together on the banks of a
stream, and two Bersaglieri who have caught a little donkey are riding
it astride, almost bursting with laughter.

And yet the sad exodus of Chinese peasants which began yesterday still
continues; in spite of the assurance given them that no harm would
be done to any one, those who were left felt themselves too near and
preferred to flee. Whole families departed with bowed heads; men,
women, children, all dressed alike in blue cotton gowns, and loaded
with baggage, even the babies resignedly carrying their little pillows
and mattresses.

One scene was heart-breaking. An old Chinese woman--very, very old,
perhaps a hundred years old--who could scarcely stand up, was going,
God knows where, driven from her home, where a company of Germans
had established themselves; she went away, dragging herself along
with the help of two young lads who may have been her grandsons and
who supported her as best they could, looking at her with infinite
respect and tenderness. Seeming not to see us and looking as though
she had nothing further to expect from any one, she passed slowly
by, her poor face filled with despair, with supreme and irremediable
distress, whilst the soldiers behind her were throwing away with shouts
of laughter the unpretentious images from the altar of her ancestors.
The beautiful sunshine of the autumn morning shone calmly on her
well-cared-for little garden, blooming with zinnias and asters.

The fort which fell to the lot of the French occupies almost the
space of a town with all its dependencies, lodgings for mandarins
and soldiers, electrical work-shops, stables, and powder magazines.
In spite of the dragons that adorn the gates and in spite of the
clawed monster painted on a stone slab in front of the entrance, it
is constructed upon the most recent principles--plastered, casemated,
and provided with Krupp guns of the latest models. Unfortunately for
the Chinese, who had accumulated in the vicinity of Ning-Hia some
terrifying defences,--mines, torpedoes, fougades, and intrenched
camps,--nothing was finished, nothing completed anywhere; the movement
against foreigners began six months too soon, before they had gotten
into working order all the material Europe had sold to Li-Hung-Chang.

A thousand Zouaves who are to arrive to-morrow are to occupy this fort
during the winter; while awaiting their arrival we have simply brought
along a score of sailors to take possession.

It is curious to go among these houses, abandoned in haste and terror,
and to find ourselves in the midst of the disorder of precipitate
flight; broken furniture and dishes, clothing, guns, bayonets,
ballistic books, boots with paper soles, umbrellas, and ambulance
supplies are piled pell-mell before the doors. In the kitchens dishes
of rice are ready for the oven, with plates of cabbage and cakes made
of fried grasshoppers.

There are shells everywhere, cartridges strew the grounds, gun-cotton
is dangerously dispersed, and black powder is scattered in long trains.
But side by side with this debauch of war materials, droll details
attest the human side of Chinese life; on all the window-sills are pots
of flowers, on all the walls are household gods placed there by the
soldiers. The familiar sparrow abounds here, and is never interfered
with, it seems, by the inhabitants of the place, and from the roofs
the cats, circumspect but anxious to enter into relations with us,
are observing the sort of _ménage_ that will be possible with such
unexpected hosts as ourselves.

Very near us, a hundred metres from our fort, passes the Great Wall
of China. It is surmounted at this point by a watch tower, where the
Japanese are now established, and there they have planted their white
flag on a bamboo stick in the red sunlight.

Always smiling, especially at the French, the little Japanese soldiers
invite us to come up to see from above the surrounding country.

The Great Wall, seven or eight hundred metres thick at this point,
descends gently amid green grass on the Chinese side, but drops
vertically on the side toward Manchuria, where it is flanked by
enormous square bastions.

We mount, and at our feet we see the wall plunging on one hand into the
Yellow Sea, while on the other it rises to the summits of the mountain
and goes winding on through the fields as far as the eye can see,
giving the impression of a colossal thing which never comes to any end.

Toward the east we have a view, in this clear light, of the deserted
plains of Manchuria.

Toward the west--in China--the wooded country has a deceptive look
of peace and confidence. All the European flags hoisted on the forts
have a festive air amid all the green. It is true that on a plain near
the shore there are evidences of an immense movement of Cossacks, but
they are far away and the noise does not reach us, though there are at
least five thousand men among the tents and among the flags which are
stuck into the ground. Where the other powers send to Ning-Hia only a
few companies, the Russians on the contrary proceed in great masses,
because of their designs on neighboring Manchuria. Shan-Haï-Kouan, the
Tartar village which has closed its gates through fear of pillage,
appears in the distance, gray and mute as though asleep behind its
high crenellated walls. On the sea off toward the horizon, rests the
squadron of the Allies,--a fleet of steel monsters with black smoke,
friends for the moment, silently assembled in the motionless blue.

The weather is calm, exquisite, buoyant. The prodigious rampart of
China blossoms at this season like a garden. Between its sombre bricks,
loosened by time, asters, and quantities of pinks like those at the
seashore in France are pushing their way through.

This legendary wall, which has for centuries stopped all invasion from
the north, will probably nevermore see the yellow flag and the green
dragon of the Celestial emperors. Its time has gone by, passed, is
forever at an end.




III

ON THE WAY TO PEKIN


I

  THURSDAY, Oct. 11, 1900.

At noon, on a beautiful calm day that is almost warm and very luminous
on the water, I leave the admiral's ship, the _Redoutable_, to go on a
mission to Pekin.

We are in the gulf of Petchili on the road to Taku, but at such
a distance from the shore that it is not visible, so there is no
indication of China anywhere.

The trip begins with a short ride on a steam launch, which takes us out
to the _Bengali_, the little despatch-boat which will bring me to land
by to-night.

The water is softly blue in the autumn sunshine, which is always
bright in this part of the world. To-day, by chance, the wind and the
waves seem to sleep. As far as one can see, great warships succeed
one another, motionless and menacing. As far as the horizon there are
the turrets, the masts, the smoke of the astonishing international
squadron with all its train of satellites, torpedo boats, transports,
and a legion of packet-boats.

The _Bengali_, upon which I am about to embark for a day, is one of
the little French ships carrying troops and war supplies, which for a
month past has been painfully and wearisomely going and coming between
the transports or freighters arriving from France, and the port of Taku
beyond the Pei-Ho bar.

To-day it is full of Zouaves,--brave Zouaves who arrived yesterday from
Tunis, careless and happy, bound for this ominous Chinese land. They
are crowded on the bridge, packed together, their faces gay and their
eyes wide open for a glimpse of China, which has filled their thoughts
for weeks and which is now near at hand, just over the horizon.

According to ceremonial custom, the _Bengali_, when it appears,
must pass the stern of the _Redoutable_ to salute the admiral. The
music waits behind the armor, ready to play one of those marches so
intoxicating to the sailor. And when we come up close to the big ship,
almost under its shadow, all the Zouaves--those destined to return as
well as those who must perish--wave their red caps to the sound of the
bugle, with hurrahs for the ship, which here represents France to
their eyes, and for the admiral, who from the bridge raises his cap in
their honor.

At the end of half an hour China appears.

Never has an uglier and more forbidding shore surprised and congealed
poor newly arrived soldiers. A low shore, a gray barren land without
tree or grass. Everywhere there are forts of colossal size of the same
gray as the earth, masses of geometrical outline pierced by embrasures
for guns. Never has the approach to a country presented a more
extensive or aggressive military array; on both sides of the horrible
stream with its muddy waters loom similar forts, giving the impression
of a place both terrible and impregnable, giving the impression also
that this harbor, in spite of its wretched surroundings, is of the
first order of importance, is the key to a great country, and gives
access to a city large, rich, and powerful--as Pekin must have been.
From a nearer view the walls of the first two forts, stained, full of
holes, and ravaged by cannon-balls, bear witness to furious and recent
battles.

We know how, on the day Taku was taken, they exhausted their strength
on one another. By a miracle, a French shell from the _Lion_ fell
right into one of them, causing the explosion of its enormous powder
magazine so that the yellow gunners lost their heads. The Japanese then
seized this fort and opened an unexpected fire on the one opposite,
and immediately the overthrow of the Chinese began. Had it not been
for this chance, for this shell, and for this panic, all the European
gunners anchored in the Pei-Ho would inevitably have been lost; the
landing of the Allies would have been impossible or problematical, and
the whole face of the war changed.

[Illustration: TRANSPORTS ON THE PEI-HO]

We now move up the river through the muddy infected water where
impurities of all sorts are floating, as well as the bodies of men
and animals. On both of the sombre shores we see by the light of
the declining sun a procession of ruins, a uniform black and gray
desolation of earth, ashes, and calcined slopes, tumbled walls, and
ruins.

On this pestilential river a feverish animation reigns, so that it is
difficult for us to make our way through the obstructions. Junks by
the hundreds, each flying the colors and having at the stern the name
of the nation by whom it is employed--France, Italy, United States,
etc.--in big letters above the devilry of the Chinese inscription,
besides a numberless flotilla of towing vessels, lighters, colliers,
and packets.

On the terrible, steep, muddy banks, amongst filth and dead animals,
there is an ant-like activity. Soldiers of all the armies of Europe
mingle with coolies driven with sticks, unpacking military stores,
tents, guns, wagons, mules, horses. Such a confusion as never was of
uniforms, rubbish, cannons, débris, and provisions of all kinds. An icy
wind which rises toward evening makes us shiver after the hot sun of
the day and brings with it the gloom of winter.

Before the ruins of a quarter where the flag of France is floating, the
_Bengali_ approaches the lugubrious shore, and our Zouaves disembark
rather discountenanced by the sombre reception given them by China.
While waiting for some sort of a shelter to be provided, they light
fires on the shore which the wind fans into flame, and there they heat
their evening meal in darkness and silence and in the midst of clouds
of infected dust.

On the deserted plain from which the dust, the cold, and the squalls
come, the black devastated town, overrun with soldiers, extends,
breathing pestilence and death.

A small street through its centre, hastily rebuilt in a few days' time
with mud, broken timbers, and iron, is lined with dubious-looking
taverns. Men from I don't know where, mongrels of every race, sell
absinthe, salt-fish, and deadly liquors to the soldiers. There is some
drunkenness, and occasionally knives are drawn.

Outside of this improvised quarter Taku no longer exists. Nothing but
ruined walls, burned roofs, piles of ashes, and nameless receptacles
of filth, wherein are huddled together old clothing, dogs, and human
heads covered with hair.

I slept on board the _Bengali_, this hospitality having been extended
to me by the commander. Occasional shots break the nocturnal silence,
and toward morning I hear--although half asleep--horrible cries uttered
by the Chinese on shore.


  FRIDAY, October 12.

I rose at daybreak to go and take the train, which still runs as far as
Tien-Tsin and even a little beyond. Farther on, the road having been
destroyed by Boxers, I shall continue I do not yet know how, either
in a Chinese cart, in a junk, or on horseback, and from all accounts
cannot count on seeing the great walls of Pekin for six or seven days.
I have an order which will secure me rations from the posts along the
road, otherwise I should run the risk of dying from hunger in this
ravaged land. I have as little baggage as possible, nothing but a light
canteen, and but one travelling companion, a faithful servant brought
from France.

At the station, where I arrive at sunrise, I find again all yesterday's
Zouaves, their knapsacks on their backs. No tickets are necessary for
this railway, everything military is carried by right of conquest.
Along with Cossack and Japanese soldiers a thousand Zouaves pile into
carriages with broken panes through which the wind whistles. I find a
place with their officers, and very soon we are calling up memories of
Africa, where they have been, and longing for Tunis and Algeria the
White.

We are two hours and a half on the road across the mournful plain. At
first it was only gray earth as at Taku; then there were reeds and
herbage touched with frost. On all sides are immense splashes of red,
like blood stains, due to the autumn flowering of a kind of marsh
plant. On the horizon of this desert myriads of migratory birds may
be seen, rising like clouds, eddying and then falling. The north wind
blows and it is very cold.

Soon the plain is peopled with tombs,--tombs without number, all of the
same shape,--each one a kind of cone of earth piled up and surmounted
by a ball of faience,--some small, like little huts, others as large
as camping tents. They are grouped according to families and they are
legion. The entire country is a burial-place with a gory look resulting
from the splashes of red to which I have referred.

At the stopping-places where the ruined stations are occupied by
Cossacks, there are calcined cars--damaged by fire--and locomotives
riddled with balls. At other places we do not stop because there
is nothing left; the few villages which mark this vicinity are all
destroyed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tien-Tsin! It is ten o'clock in the morning. Pierced by the cold, we
step down amid the clouds of dust which the north wind perpetually
scatters over this dried-up country. We are taken in hand by Chinese
scouts, who, without even knowing where we want to go, trot off, at
full speed, with us in their little carriages. The European streets
along which they are running (here called "concessions"), seen through
a cloud of blinding dust, have the look of a big city, but the almost
luxurious houses are riddled with shells, literally ripped open and
without roofs or windows. The shores of the rivers, here as at Taku,
are like a fevered babel; thousands of junks lie there, unloading
troops, horses, guns. In the streets where Chinese workmen are carrying
enormous loads of war supplies, one meets soldiers of all the nations
of Europe, officers in every sort of uniform, on horseback, in chairs,
or on foot. And there is of course a perpetual interchange of military
salutes.

Where are we to lay our heads? Really, we have no idea, in spite of our
desire for a shelter from the icy wind and dust. However, our Chinese
runners keep on like rolling balls.

We knock at the doors of two or three hotels which have risen up among
the ruins out of a confusion of broken furniture. Everything is full,
full to overflowing; gold will not buy a loft with a mattress.

Willy-nilly we must beg our board and lodging from unknown officers,
who give us the most friendly hospitality in houses where the holes
made by shot and shell have been hastily stopped up so that the wind
may no longer enter.


  SATURDAY, October 13.

I have chosen to travel by junk as far as the course of the Pei-Ho will
permit, the junk serving as a lodging in this country where I am forced
to dally.

This makes necessary many little preparations.

The first thing is to make a requisition for this junk and to
appropriate this species of sarcophagus where I am to live under a
roof of matting. The next is to buy in the more or less ruined shops
of Tien-Tsin the things necessary for a few days of nomadic life,
from bedding to arms; and lastly, to hire from the Lazarist Fathers a
Chinese person to make tea,--young Toum, aged fourteen, with the face
of a cat and a queue reaching to the ground.

I dined with General Frey, who, with his small French detachment, was,
as every one knows, the first to enter the heart of Pekin, the Imperial
City. He was good enough to relate to me in detail this magnificent
journey, the taking of the Marble Bridge and his final entrance into
the Imperial City,--that mysterious place which I shall soon see, and
into which before him no European had ever penetrated.

As to my own small personal expedition, which in comparison with his
appears so easy and unimportant, the general kindly concerned himself
with what we were to drink _en route_, my servant and I, in this time
of infection, when the water is a constant danger on account of human
remains, thrown there by the Chinese, left lying in all the wells; and
he made me a present of untold value,--a case of eau d'Evian.


II

THE TWO GODDESSES OF THE BOXERS


  SUNDAY, October 14.

An old Chinese woman, wrinkled as a winter apple, timidly opens the
door at which we have loudly knocked. It stands in the deep shadow of
a narrow passageway exhaling unhealthy fetid smells, between walls
blackened by filth, where one feels as shut in as in the heart of a
prison.

The old woman, an enigmatical figure, looks us all over with a
blank impenetrable gaze; then recognizing among us the chief of the
international police, she silently steps aside and permits us to enter.
We follow her into a dark little court. Poor late autumn flowers are
growing in the old walls, and we breathe faint sickly odors.

We are a group of officers, three French, two English, and one Russian,
who are there clearly by right of conquest.

Our conductor is a strange creature, balancing on the tips of her
incredibly small feet. Her gray hair fastened with long pins is so
tightly drawn back that it seems to raise her eyes unduly. Her dark
dress is indefinite in color, but her parchment-like face bears to a
high degree that something appertaining to a worn-out race, which we
are wont to call distinction. She appears to be only a servant, yet
her aspect, her carriage, are disconcerting; some mystery broods over
her, she seems like a refined matron who has resorted to a shameful
clandestine occupation. This whole place, moreover, is difficult to
describe to those who do not know it.

Beyond the court is a sordid vestibule, then a door painted black,
with a Chinese inscription consisting of two big red letters. Without
knocking, the old woman draws the bolt and opens it.

We may be mistaken, but we have come in all good faith to pay a visit
to _two goddesses_,--prisoners kept shut up in this palace. For here
we are in the common, the lower dependencies, the secret places of the
palace of the viceroy of Petchili, and to reach this spot we have had
to pass over the immense desolation of a town with cyclopean walls
which is at present only a mass of débris and dead bodies.

The animation of these ruins, accidentally peopled by joyous soldiers,
is singular, unique, on this Sunday, which is a holiday in camp and
barracks. In the long streets filled with wreckage of all kinds,
Zouaves and African chasseurs, arm-in-arm with Germans in pointed
helmets, pass gaily between the walls of roofless houses. There are
little Japanese soldiers, shining and automatic, Russians with flat
caps, plumed Bersaglieri, Austrians, Americans with big felt hats, and
Indian cavalrymen with enormous turbans. All the flags of Europe are
floating over the ruins of Tien-Tsin, which has been partitioned by
the allied armies. In certain quarters the Chinese who have gradually
returned, after their flight, have established bazars in the open air
in the lovely sunshine of this autumn Sunday,--bazars where in the
midst of incendiary ashes they sell to the soldiers articles picked
up in the ruins, porcelains, jars, silk dresses, furs. There are so
many of these soldiers, so many uniforms of every kind on our route, so
many sentinels presenting arms, that we grow weary returning the many
salutes received as we pass through this unheard-of babel.

At the farther side of the destroyed city, near the high ramparts in
front of the palace of the viceroy, where we are going to see the
goddesses, some Chinese, undergoing torture in a kind of pillory,
are lined up along the wall, with inscriptions above them describing
their offences. Two pickets guard the doors with bayonetted guns, one
an American, the other a Japanese, standing alongside of the horrible
grinning old stone monsters who watch, crouching, on either side of the
entrance.

There is nothing sumptuous, nothing great in this dusty, decrepit
palace which we have traversed unheeding, but it speaks of real China,
of old China, grimacing and hostile. There is a profusion of monsters
in marble, in broken faience, and in worm-eaten wood, falling to pieces
from sheer old age or threatening from the edges of roofs to do so;
frightful forms half buried in sand and ashes, with horns, claws,
forked tongues, and big squinting eyes.

In the grim walled court a few late roses are still in blossom under
trees a century old.

Now, after various turns along badly lighted passages, we reach the
goddesses' door,--the one marked with two big red letters. The old
Chinese woman, ever mute and mysterious, with head held high but with
lifeless eyes persistently downcast, pushes open the black doors, with
a gesture of submission which means: "Here they are, look at them!"

In a room which is almost dark and where the evening sun never enters,
two poor girls, two sisters who look alike, are seated with bowed
heads amid lamentable disorder, in positions indicative of supreme
consternation,--one on a chair, the other on the edge of an ebony bed
which they must share at night. They are dressed in humble black, but
here and there on the floor are scattered shining silks and tunics
embroidered in big flowers and gold chimæras,--the garments they put
on when going to meet the armies, in the midst of whistling bullets on
days of battle,--their attire as warriors and goddesses.

For they are a kind of Jeanne d'Arc,--if it is not blasphemy to
pronounce a name of almost ideal purity in this connection,--they are
the goddesses of the incomprehensible Boxers, so atrocious and at the
same time so admirable: hysterical creatures, exciting both the hatred
and terror of the foreigner, who one day fled without fighting in a
panic of fear, and the next with the shrieks of the possessed threw
themselves straight into the face of death, under a shower of bullets
from troops ten times as numerous as themselves.

The goddesses, taken prisoners, are the property, the curious bibelot,
if one may use the word, of the seven Allies. They are not badly
treated. They are merely shut up for fear they will commit suicide,
which has become a fixed idea with them. What will be their fate?
Already their captors are tired of seeing them and don't know what to
do with them.

On a day of defeat the junk in which they sought refuge was surrounded,
and they, with their mother, who followed them everywhere, threw
themselves into the water. The soldiers fished them out fainting. The
goddesses after much care came to their senses. But the mamma never
again opened her oblique old Chinese eyes. The girls were made to
believe that she had been taken to a hospital and would soon come back.
At first the prisoners were brave, animated, haughty, and always well
dressed. But this very morning they have been told that their mother is
no more, and it is that which has stunned them, like a physical blow.

Having no money to buy mourning dress, which in China is always white,
they asked to be allowed white leather shoes--which at this moment
cover their doll-like feet, and which are as essential here as the
crape veil is with us.

They are both slender and of a waxen pallor, scarcely pretty, but
with a certain grace, a certain charm as they stand there, one in
front of the other, without tears, with drooping eyes and with arms
falling straight at their sides. They do not raise their eyes even to
ascertain who enters or what is wanted of them. They do not stir as we
come in, nothing matters to them now. They await death, indifferent to
everything.

They inspire in us an unlooked-for respect by the dignity of their
despair, respect and infinite compassion. We have nothing to say to one
another, and are as embarrassed at being there as though we had been
guilty of some indiscretion.

It occurred to us to put some money on the disordered bed; but one of
the sisters, while appearing not to see us, threw the pieces of silver
onto the floor and with a gesture invited the servant to dispose of
them as she wished. So that this was on our part a further mistake.

There is such an abyss of misunderstanding between European officers
and Boxer goddesses that it is impossible to show our sympathy for
them in any way. So we, who came to be amused by a curious sight,
depart in silence with a tightening of the heartstrings at the thought
of the two poor creatures imprisoned in a gloomy room in the fading
evening light.

       *       *       *       *       *

My junk, with five Chinese aboard, will go up the river under the
French flag, which is already a protection. The war department has
decided it to be more prudent--although my servant and I are armed--to
send two soldiers with us, two men with horses carrying guns and
munitions.

Beyond Tien-Tsin, where I have spent another day, one may go an hour
further by train in the direction of Pekin, as far as the town of
Yang-Soon. My junk, with two soldiers, Toum, and the baggage, will
await me there at a bend in the river, and has gone on ahead to-day
with a military escort.

I dine this evening with the consul-general, the one who escaped being
shot almost by miracle, although his flag was for a long time, during
the siege, a mark for the Chinese gunners.


III

  MONDAY, October 15.

I left Tien-Tsin by railway at eight o'clock in the morning. An hour
on the road, across the same old plain, the same desolation, the same
cutting wind, the same dust. Then the ruins of Yang-Soon, where the
train stops because there is no road left; from this point on, the
Boxers have destroyed everything, the bridges are cut, the stations
burned, and the rails scattered over the country.

My junk is there awaiting me by the river's side. For the present, for
three days at least, I must arrange for a life on the water, in the
little sarcophagus which is the cabin of this queer boat, under the
roof of matting which gives a view of the sky through a thousand holes,
and which to-night will permit the white frost to disturb our slumbers.
But this room in which I am to live, eat and sleep in complete
promiscuity with my French companions is so small, so very small that
I dismiss one of the soldiers. We could never manage there with four.

The Chinese of my train, ragged and sordid, receive me with profound
bows. One takes the rudder, the others jump onto the bank, where they
harness themselves to the end of a long line attached to the mast
of the junk--and we are off, being towed against the current of the
Pei-Ho, a heavy poisonous stream in which, here and there amongst the
reeds on the banks, parts of human bodies appear.

The soldier I have kept is named Renaud, and he tells me he comes from
Calvados. He and my servant Osman, both happy to be going to Pekin,
vie with one another in gaiety and good-will and in comical ingenious
inventions to make our lodging more convenient. The trip, in spite of
unpleasant surroundings, begins to the sound of their merry childlike
laughter. We depart in the full morning light, under the rays of a
deceptive sunshine which pretends it is summer although an icy wind is
blowing.

The seven allied nations have established military posts from point to
point along the Pei-Ho, to insure communication by way of the river
between Pekin and the gulf of Petchili, where their ships come in.
Toward eleven o'clock I stop the junk near a large Chinese fort from
which floats the French flag.

It is one of our posts occupied by Zouaves; we get out to get our
rations, enough bread, wine, preserves, sugar, and tea for two days. We
shall receive no more now until Tong-Tchow (City of Celestial Purity),
which we shall reach day after to-morrow in the evening, if nothing
untoward prevents. Then the towing of our junk begins again; slowly and
monotonously we move between gloomy devastated banks.

The country around us remains unchanged. On both sides as far as the
eye can reach are fields of "sorghos"--which is a kind of giant millet
much taller than our maize. The war prevented its being harvested in
season, and so it stands reddened by the frost. The monotonous little
tow-path, a narrow strip on the grayish soil, is on a level with the
cold fetid water, at the foot of the eternal dried sorghos, which forms
an endless curtain all along the river. Sometimes a phantom village
appears on the horizon; as one approaches it, it proves to be only
ruins and the bodies of the dead.

I have a mandarin's arm-chair in my junk on which to enthrone myself
when the sun shines and the wind is not too cutting. More frequently
I prefer to walk along the shore doing my miles in company with our
towers, who plod along bending over like beasts of burden, with
the rope passed over the shoulders. Osman and Renaud peer out of a
port-hole after me as we walk along the track of gray earth shut in
by the uninterrupted border of sorghos and by the river, the wind
blowing sharply all the while. We are often obliged to step aside
suddenly because of a dead man--with one leg stretched out across the
path--looking slyly up at us.

The events of the day are the meeting of junks going down the river and
passing ours. They go in long lines fastened together, flying the flag
of some one of the allied nations, and carrying the sick, the wounded,
and the spoils of war.

In the twilight we pass the remains of a village in which the Russians,
on their way to Manchuria, are encamped for the night. They are taking
carved furniture out of an abandoned house, breaking it up and making a
fire of it. As we go on we see the flames mounting in great jets, and
reaching out to the sorghos near by; for a long time its incendiary
light is visible behind us, in the mournful empty grayness of the
distance. This first nightfall on our junk is full of gloom in the
strange solitude into which hour by hour we penetrate still further.
The shadows are deep about us and there are many dead along the ground.
In the confused and infinite darkness, all about us seems hostile or
gloomy, and the cold increases with the silence and obscurity.

The impression of melancholy disappears at supper when our Chinese
lantern is lighted, illuminating the sarcophagus, which we have closed
as tightly as possible to shut out the wind. I have invited my two
companions to my table--my comical little table, which they themselves
have made from a broken oar and an old plank. The bread seems exquisite
to us after our long walk on the bank; to warm us we have the hot tea
which young Toum has prepared for us over a fire of sorghos, and when
hunger is assuaged and Turkish cigarettes give forth their soothing
clouds of smoke, we have almost a feeling of home and comfort in our
poor shelter enveloped in outside darkness.

Then comes bedtime--although the junk moves on, our towers continuing
their march by feeling their way along the sorghos of the dark path, so
full of surprises. Toum, although he is an elegant young Chinaman, goes
to roost with the others of his race in the straw in the hold. The rest
of us, still dressed of course, with our boots on and firearms at hand,
stretch out on the narrow camp-bed of our cabin, looking at the stars,
which, as soon as the lantern is out, appear between the meshes of our
matting-roof, shining brightly in the frosty sky.

Distant shots reach us from far off, indicating nocturnal dramas with
which we have no concern, and just before midnight two guards, one
Japanese and the other German, try to stop our junk; we are obliged
to get up to discuss the matter, and by means of a hastily lighted
lantern, show the French flag and the stripes that I wear on my sleeve.

At midnight the Chinese make fast our boat, at a spot they say is safe,
so that they too may rest. We all fall into a profound slumber in the
icy night.


IV

  TUESDAY, October 16.

We are up at daylight and off again. In the cold, magnificent dawn,
upon a clear pink sky, the sun rises and shines without heat on the
green plain, and on the deserted place where we have slept.

All at once I leap to the ground with an instinctive longing for
activity, anxious to move, to walk. Horrors! At a turn in the path as
I am running fast without looking where I am going, I almost step on
something in the form of a cross,--a naked corpse lying face downward
with extended arms, half buried in the mud and of a corresponding
color; the dogs or the crows, or some Chinese who wanted the queue,
have taken the scalp, leaving the cranium white and minus hair or skin.

It grows colder each day as we get farther away from the sea, and the
plain begins gradually to slope upward.

Junks pass as they did yesterday, going down the river in files with
military stores, and are under the care of soldiers of all the nations
of Europe. Then come long intervals of solitude, during which no living
thing appears in this region of millet and reeds. The wind that blows
more and more bitterly is healthful; it dilates the chest, and for the
moment redoubles life. So we march along between the sorghos and the
river, on the everlasting frosty path that leads to Pekin, without
fatigue, without any desire to hurry, but always ahead of the solemn
Chinamen, who, tugging at their ropes, continue to draw our floating
house, keeping up their pace with the regularity of machines.

There are a few trees now on the banks, willows with very green leaves
of a variety unknown to us; they seem untouched by the autumn, and
their beautiful color is in striking contrast to the rusty tones of the
grass and the dying sorghos. There are gardens too,--abandoned gardens
that belonged to hamlets that have been burned; our Chinamen sometimes
send one of their number on a marauding expedition, and he brings back
armfuls of vegetables for our meals.

Osman and Renaud, as we pass by ruined houses, sometimes pick up
articles which they think necessary for the embellishment of our
dwelling,--small mirrors, carved seats, lanterns, even bunches of
artificial flowers made of rice paper, which may have adorned the
headdresses of massacred or fleeing Chinese ladies, and which they
naïvely use to decorate the walls of the room. The interior of our
sarcophagus soon takes on an air of distinction quite droll and
barbaric.

It is astonishing how soon we accustom ourselves to the perfectly
simple life on the junk, an existence of healthy fatigue, devouring
appetites, and heavy sleep.

Toward the evening of this day the mountains of Mongolia, those which
tower above Pekin, begin to appear on the distant horizon, on the very
border of this infinitely level land.

There is something especially lugubrious about the twilight to-day. The
sinuous Pei-Ho, narrowing hour by hour at each turn, seems to be but a
tiny stream between its silent shores, and we feel altogether too much
shut in by the confused growth which conceals such sombre things. The
day goes out in one of those cold dead colorings that are a specialty
of Northern winters. All that there is in the way of light comes from
the water, which reflects more vividly than the sky; the river, like
a mirror, reflects the sunset yellows; one might even say that it
exaggerates the sad light, as it runs between the inverted images of
the reeds, the monotonous sorghos and the already black silhouettes
of the few trees. The solitude is deeper than that of yesterday.
The cold and the silence settle down upon one like a winding sheet.
There is a penetrating melancholy in feeling the slow oncoming of the
night in this nameless spot, a certain anguish in looking at the last
reflections of the neighboring reeds,--reflections which continue, even
though ahead of us darkness claims the hostile and unknown distance.

Happily, the hour for supper is here, the longed-for hour, for we are
very hungry. In our little retreat I shall find again the red light of
our lantern, the excellent soldier's bread, the smoking tea served by
Toum, and the cheerfulness of my two good servants.

Toward nine o'clock, just as we pass a group of junks full of people,
all Chinese,--marauders' junks evidently,--we hear cries behind
us,--cries of distress and death, cries that are horrible in the
stillness. Toum, who lends his fine ear and understands all that these
people are saying, explains that they are engaged in killing an old man
because he has stolen some rice. We were not numerous enough or sure
enough of our party, to interfere. I fired two shots into the air in
their direction, and all became still as if by magic; we had, no doubt,
saved the head of the old rice thief at least until the morning.

Then it is quiet until daylight. After midnight, tied up no matter
where among the reeds, we all sleep a sleep that is undisturbed. It
is calm and cold under the stars. There are a few shots fired in the
distance. We are conscious of them, but they do not wake us.


  WEDNESDAY, October 17.

We rise at daybreak and run along the bank in the white frost; the dawn
is pink, and soon the sun rises bright and clear.

Wishing to take a short cut through the everlasting sorghos fields and
to rejoin the junk which is obliged to follow a long turn in the river
further on, we cross the ruins of a hamlet where frightfully contorted
bodies are lying, on whose blackened members the ice has formed little
crystals that shine like a coating of salt.

After our noon dinner, as we emerge from the semi-obscurity of our
sarcophagus, the Chinamen point to the horizon. Tong-Tchow, the "City
of Celestial Purity," is beginning to show itself; great black walls
surmounted with miradors, and an astonishingly tall, slender tower, of
a very Chinese outline with twenty superimposed roofs.

It is all distant still, and the plains about us are full of horrors.
From a stranded junk emerges a long dead arm, of a bluish tone. And
the bodies of cattle borne by the current pass by us in a perfect
procession, all swollen and exhaling a bovine pest. A cemetery must
have been violated hereabouts, for on the mud of the shore there are
empty coffins with human bones alongside them.


V

AT TONG-TCHOW

Tong-Tchow, which occupies two or three kilometres along the bank, is
one of those immense Chinese cities--more densely populated than many
of the capitals of Europe--whose very name is almost unheard of with
us. To-day, needless to say, it is but the ghost of a city, and as one
approaches it it does not take long to perceive that it is now empty
and in ruin.

We approach slowly. At the foot of the high black crenellated walls,
junks are crowded all along the river. On the bank the same excitement
as at Taku and at Tien-Tsin is complicated by some hundreds of
Mongolian camels crouching in the dust.

There are soldiers, invaders, cannons, materials of war. Cossacks who
are trying captured horses go and come at full gallop among the various
groups, with great savage cries.

The various national colors of the European Allies are hoisted in
profusion; they float from high up on the black walls pierced by
cannon balls, from the camps, from the junks, from the ruins. And the
continual wind--the implacable icy wind carrying the infected dust that
smells of the dead--plays upon these flags, which give an ironical air
of festivity to all the devastation.

I look for the French flags so as to stop my junk in our neighborhood
and to go at once to our quarters. I can try our country's rations
there this evening; furthermore, not being able to continue our trip on
the river, I must procure for to-morrow morning a cart and some saddle
horses.

Stopping near a place which seems to belong to us, I ask some Zouaves
the road to our quarters; they promptly, eagerly, and politely offer to
accompany me. Together we go on toward a great door in the thick black
wall.

At this entrance to the city they have, by means of ropes and boards,
established a cattle-yard for the purpose of supplying food for the
soldiers. Besides a few live animals there are three or four on the
ground, dead from the bovine pest, and some Chinese prisoners have this
moment come to drag them to the river, the general rendezvous for dead
bodies.

We enter a street where our soldiers are employed at various kinds of
work in the midst of heaps of rubbish. Through the broken doors and
windows of the houses the wretched interiors are visible; everything
is in fragments, broken, destroyed as though for pleasure. From the
thick dust raised by the north wind and by our own footsteps rises an
intolerable odor of the dead.

For two months the rage for destruction, the frenzy for murder, has
beset this unfortunate "City of Celestial Purity," invaded by the
troops of eight or ten different countries. She felt the first shock of
all these hereditary hatreds. First the Boxers came her way. Then the
Japanese,--heroic little soldiers of whom I do not wish to speak ill,
but who destroy and kill as barbarian armies were wont to do. Still
less do I wish to speak ill of our friends, the Russians; but they have
sent here their Cossack neighbors from Tartary, and half-Mongolian
Siberians, all admirable under fire, but looking at war in the Asiatic
fashion. Then there are the cruel cavalrymen of India sent by Great
Britain. America has let loose her soldiers. And when, in the first
desire for vengeance for Chinese cruelties, the Italians, the Germans,
the Austrians, and the French arrived, nothing was left intact.

Our commander and his officers have improvised lodgings and offices in
some of the larger Chinese houses, hastily repairing the roofs and
walls. In strong contrast to the rudeness of these places are the
sumptuous wood carvings and the tall Chinese vases found intact among
the ruins.

They promise me carriages and horses for to-morrow morning to be ready
at sunrise on the bank near my junk. When all is settled there is about
an hour of daylight left, so I wander about the ruins of the city with
my armed followers, Osman, Renaud, and Chinese Toum.

As one gets farther away from the quarters where our soldiers are, the
horrors increase with the solitude and the silence.

We come first to the street of the China merchants, great warehouses
where the products of the Canton manufactories were stored. It must
have been a fine street judging from the carved and gilded but ruined
façades which remain. To-day the yawning shops, almost demolished,
seem to vomit onto the highway their heaps of broken fragments. One
walks on precious enamel decorated with brilliant flowers, for it
literally covers the ground so that one crushes it in passing. There
is no knowing whose work this was; it was already done when our troops
arrived. But it must have taken whole days of furious attack with boots
and clubs to reduce it all to such small bits; jars, plates, cups,
are ground to atoms, pulverized, together with human bones and hair.
At the back of these warehouses the coarser wares occupied a sort of
interior court. These courts with their old walls are particularly
lugubrious this evening, in the dying light. In one of them we found
a mangy dog trying to drag something from underneath a pile of broken
plates--it was the body of a child whose skull had been broken. The dog
began to eat the flesh that was left on the legs of the poor dead thing.

There was no one to be seen in the long devastated streets where the
framework of the houses, as well as the tiles and the bricks, had
tumbled down. Crows croaked in the silence. Horrible dogs who feed
on the dead fled before us, hanging their tails. We had glimpses of
Chinese prowlers, wretched-looking creatures, trying to find something
to steal, or of some of the dispossessed timidly creeping along the
walls attempting to find out what has become of their homes.

The sun is already low, and the wind is rising as it does every night.
We shiver with the sudden cold. Empty houses fill the shadows.

These houses are all of considerable extent, with recesses, a
succession of courts, rock work, basins, and melancholy gardens.
Crossing the threshold, guarded by the ever-present granite monsters
worn by the rubbing of hands, one finds oneself in an endless series of
apartments. The intimate details of Chinese life are touchingly and
graciously revealed by the arrangement of potted plants, flowerbeds,
and little balconies where bindweed and other vines are trained.

Here, surrounded with playthings, is a poor doll, which doubtless
belonged to some child whose head has been broken; there a cage hangs
with the bird still in it, dried up in one corner with its feet in the
air.

Everything is sacked, removed, or destroyed; furniture is broken, the
contents of drawers thrown about the floors, papers, blood-stained
clothing, Chinese women's shoes spattered with blood, and here and
there limbs, hands, heads, and clumps of hair.

In certain of the gardens neglected plants continue to blossom gaily,
running over into the walks amongst the human remains. Around an
arbor which conceals the body of a woman, twines pink convolvulus in
blossoming garlands. The blossom is still open at this late hour of the
day and in spite of the cold nights, which quite upsets our European
ideas of convolvulus.

In one of the houses back in a recess in a dark loft, something moves!
Two women cower pitifully! Finding themselves discovered, they are
seized with terror and fall at our feet, trembling, weeping, clasping
their hands, and begging for mercy. One is young, the other older,
and they look alike. Mother and daughter! "Pardon, sir, pardon; we are
afraid," translates little Toum naïvely, understanding their broken
words. Evidently they expect the worst of us--and then death. For how
long have they lived in this hole, these two poor things, thinking with
each step that resounds on the pavement of the deserted court that
their end has come? We leave them a few pieces of silver, which perhaps
humiliates without helping them, but it is all that we can do, and then
we go.

Another house, a house of the rich this one is, with a profusion of
potted plants in enamelled porcelain jars in the sad little garden.
In an apartment that is already dark (for decidedly night is coming
on, the uncertainty of twilight is beginning), but where the havoc is
less extensive, for there are great chests and beautiful arm-chairs
still intact, Osman suddenly recoils with terror before something which
emerges from a bucket placed upon a board. Two torn thighs, the whole
lower part of a woman thrust into this bucket with the feet in the air!
Undoubtedly the mistress of this elegant home. Her body? Who knows
what has been done with the body? But here is the head, under this
arm-chair, near the skeleton of a cat. The mouth is open, showing the
teeth, and the hair is long.

In addition to the broad, almost straight streets whose desolation is
visible from one end to the other, there are little tortuous streets
leading up to gray walls. They are the most desolate to enter at this
twilight hour, with only the cry of the crow as an accompaniment.
Little stone gnomes guard their mysterious doors, and their pavements
are strewn with human heads with long queues. One approaches certain
turns in the streets with a heavy heart. It is over, and nothing in
the world would tempt us to enter again at this hour one of those
frightfully still houses where one meets with so many gruesome
encounters.

We had gone far into the city before night came on, and the silence
had become intolerable. We return to the region where the troops are
quartered, cut by the north wind and chilled by the cold and gloom; our
return is rapid; broken china and other débris impossible to define
crackle under our feet.

The banks are lined with soldiers warming themselves and cooking their
suppers over bright fires, where they are burning chairs, tables, and
bits of carved wood or timbers. Coming out of the Dantesque streets, it
all bespeaks joy and comfort to us.

Near our junk there is a canteen, improvised by a Maltese, where
intoxicants are sold to soldiers. I send my men to get whatever
liquors they want for our supper, for we need something to warm and
cheer us if possible. We celebrate with smoking soup, tea, chartreuse,
and I don't know what besides, in our little matting-covered dwelling,
tied up this time on the pestilential mud and enveloped as usual by
cold and darkness.

At dessert, when the hour for smoking arrives in our sarcophagus,
Renaud, to whom I have given the floor, tells us that his squadron is
encamped on the borders of a Chinese cemetery in Tien-Tsin, and that
the soldiers of another European nation (I prefer not to say which) in
the same vicinity spend their time ransacking the graves and taking
from them the money which it is the custom to bury with the dead.

"To me, colonel" (I am colonel to him, as he is ignorant of the naval
appellation of _commandant_, which, with us, goes with five gold
stripes), "to me it does not seem right. Even though they are Chinese,
we ought to leave their dead in peace. What disgusts me is that they
cut their rations up on the planks of the coffins. And I say to them,
'Put it on the outside if you will, but not on the inside, which has
touched the corpse.' But these savages, colonel, laugh at me."


VI


  THURSDAY, October 18.

It is a surprise to awaken to a dark and sombre sky. We counted upon
having, as on the preceding mornings, the almost never clouded autumn
and winter sun, which in China shines and warms even when everything is
frozen hard, and which has, up to this time, helped us to support the
gruesome sights of our journey.

When we open the door of the junk just before dawn, our horses and cart
are there, having just arrived. On the forbidding shore some Mongolians
with their camels are crouched about a fire which has burned all night
in the dust; and behind their motionless groups the high walls of the
city, of an inky blackness, rise to meet the low-hanging clouds.

We leave our small nomadic equipment in the junk, in the care of two
marines of the Tong-Tchow division, who will look after it until our
return, and also our most precious possession, the last of the bottles
of pure water given us by the general.

The last stage of our journey is made in the company of the French
consul-general at Tien-Tsin and of the chancellor of the legation, who
are both bound for Pekin, under the escort of a marshal and three or
four artillerymen.

Our long, monotonous route leads us across fields of sorghos reddened
by the early frosts, and through deserted villages where no one is
stirring. It is a cold, gray morning, and the autumn country, upon
which a fine rain is falling, is in mourning.

At certain moments I almost fancy myself on the roads of the Basque
country in November, amid the uncut maize. Then all at once some
unknown symbol arises to recall China,--either a tomb of mysterious
shape or a stele mounted upon enormous granite tortoises.

From time to time we meet military convoys of one nation or another, or
lines of ambulances. In one place some Russians have taken shelter from
a shower in the ruins of a village; in another a number of Americans,
who have discovered some hidden clothing in an abandoned house, go on
their way rejoicing, with fur mantles on their backs.

Then there are tombs, always tombs, from one end to the other; China is
strewn with them; some are almost hidden by the roadside, others are
magnificently isolated in enclosures which are like mortuary thickets
of dark green cedars.

Ten o'clock. We should be approaching Pekin, although as yet nothing
indicates its nearness. We have not seen a single Chinese since our
departure; the whole country is deserted and silent under a veil of
almost imperceptible rain.

We are going to pass not far from the tomb of an empress, it seems, and
the French chancellor, who knows the neighborhood, proposes that he and
I make a détour to look at it. So, leaving the others to continue their
route, we take a side path through the tall, damp grass.

A canal and a pool soon appear, of a pale color, under the indefinite
sky. There is no one to be seen anywhere; the sad quiet of a
depopulated country prevails. The tomb on the opposite bank scarcely
peeps out from its cedar wood, which is walled about on all sides. We
see little but the first marble gates leading to it and the avenue of
white stele which is finally lost under the mysterious trees. It is
all rather distant, and is reproduced in the mirror of the pool in
long inverted reflections. Near us the tall leaden stems of some lotus
killed by the frost bend over the water, where the rain drops have
traced faint rings. The whitish spheres seen here and there are heads
of the dead.

When we rejoin our company they promise that we shall enter Pekin in
half an hour. After the complications and delays of our journey we
almost believe we shall never arrive. Besides, it is incredible that so
large a city could be so near in this deserted country, such a little
way ahead of us.

[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_
THE GREAT WALL SURROUNDING THE OUTER CITY OF PEKIN]

"Pekin does not proclaim itself," explains my new companion. "Pekin
takes hold of you; when you perceive it you are there."

The road passes through groups of cedars and willows with falling
leaves, and in the concentration of our effort to see the City
Celestial we trot on in the fine rain, which does not wet us at all, so
drying are the northern winds, carrying the dust always and everywhere;
we trot on without speaking.

"Pekin!" suddenly exclaims one of our companions, pointing out an
obscure mass just rising above the trees,--a crenellated dungeon of
superhuman proportions.

Pekin! In a few seconds, during which I am feeling the spell of this
name, a big gloomy wall, of unheard-of height, is disclosed, and goes
on endlessly in the gray, empty solitude, which resembles an accursed
steppe. It is like a complete change of scene, performed without the
noise of machinery or the sounds of an orchestra, in a silence more
impressive than any music. We are at the very foot of the bastions and
ramparts, dominated by them, although a turn in the road had up to this
moment concealed them. At the same time the rain is turning to snow,
whose white flakes mingle with the suspended dirt and dust. The wall
of Pekin overwhelms us, a giant thing of Babylonian aspect, intensely
black under the dead light of a snowy autumn morning. It rises toward
the sky like a cathedral, but it goes on; it is prolonged, always the
same, for miles. Not a person on the outskirts of the city, not a green
thing all along these walls! The ground is uneven, dusty, ashen in
color, and strewn with rags, bones, and even an occasional skull! From
the top of each black battlement a crow salutes us as we pass, cawing
mournfully.

The clouds are so thick and low that we do not see clearly; we are
oppressed by long-looked-for Pekin, which has just made its abrupt
and disconcerting appearance above our heads; we advance to the
intermittent cries of the crows, rather silent ourselves, overpowered
at being there, longing to see some movement, some life, some one or
some thing come out from these walls.

From a gate ahead of us, from a hole in the colossal enclosure, slowly
emerges an enormous brown, woolly animal like a gigantic sheep; then
two, then three, then ten. A Mongolian caravan begins to pass us,
always in the same silence, broken only by the croakings of the ravens.
These enormous Mongolian camels, with their furry coats, muffs on their
legs, and manes like lions, file in an endless procession past our
frightened horses. They wear neither bells nor rattles, like the thin
beasts of the Arabian deserts; their feet sink deep into the sand,
which muffles their footsteps so the silence is not broken by their
march.

Perceived through a veil of fine snow and black dust, the caravan has
passed us, and moves on without a sound, like a phantom thing. We find
ourselves alone again, under this Titanic wall, from which the crows
keep watch. And now it is our turn to enter the gloomy city through the
gates by which the Mongolians have just passed out.


VII

AT THE FRENCH LEGATION


Here we are at the gates, the double triple gates, deep as tunnels,
and formed of the most powerful masonry,--gates surmounted by
deadly dungeons, each one five stories high, with strange curved
roofs,--extravagant dungeons, colossal black things above a black
enclosing wall.

Our horses' hoofs sink deeper and deeper, disappear, in fact, in
the coal-black dust, which is blinding and all-pervading, in the
atmosphere as well as on the ground, in spite of the light rain and
the snowflakes which make our faces tingle.

Noiselessly, as though we were stepping upon wadding or felt, we pass
under the enormous vaults and enter the land of ruin and ashes.

A few slatternly beggars shivering in corners in their blue rags, a few
corpse-eating dogs, like those whose acquaintance we have already made
_en route_,--and that is all. Silence and solitude within as well as
without these walls. Nothing but rubbish and ruin, ruin.

The land of rubbish and ashes, and little gray bricks,--little bricks
all alike, scattered in countless myriads upon the sites of houses that
have been destroyed, or upon the pavement of what once were streets.

Little gray bricks,--this is the sole material of which Pekin was
built; a city of small, low houses decorated with a lacework of gilded
wood; a city of which only a mass of curious débris is left, after fire
and shell have crumbled away its flimsy materials.

We have come into the city at one of the corners where there was the
fiercest fighting,--the Tartar quarter, which contained the European
legations.

Long straight streets may still be traced in this infinite labyrinth
of ruins; ahead of us all is gray or black; to the sombre gray of the
fallen brick is added the monotonous tone which follows a fire,--the
gloom of ashes and the gloom of coal.

Sometimes in crossing the road they form obstacles,--these tiresome
little bricks; these are the remains of barricades where fighting must
have taken place.

After a few hundred metres we enter the street of the legations, upon
which for so many months the anxious attention of the whole world was
fixed.

Everything is in ruins, of course; yet European flags float on every
piece of wall, and we suddenly find, as we come out of the smaller
streets, the same animation as at Tien-Tsin,--a continual coming and
going of officers and soldiers, and an astonishing array of uniforms.

A big flag marks the entrance to what was our legation, two monsters
in white marble crouch at the threshold; this is the etiquette for all
Chinese palaces. Two of our soldiers guard the door which I enter, my
thoughts recurring to the heroes who defended it.

       *       *       *       *       *

We finally dismount, amid piles of rubbish, in an inner square near
a chapel, and at the entrance to a garden where the trees are losing
their leaves as an effect of the icy winds. The walls about us are so
pierced with balls that they look like sieves. The pile of rubbish at
our right is the legation proper, destroyed by the explosion of a
Chinese mine. At our left is the chancellor's house, where the brave
defenders of the place took refuge during the siege, because it was in
a less exposed situation. They have offered to take me in there; it was
not destroyed, but everything is topsy-turvy, as though it were the
day after a battle; and in the room where I am to sleep the plasterers
are at work repairing the walls, which will not be finished until this
evening.

As a new arrival, I am taken on a pilgrimage to the garden where those
of our sailors who fell on the field of honor were hastily buried amid
a shower of balls. There is no grass here, no blossoming plants, only
a gray soil trampled by the combatants,--crumbling from dryness and
cold,--trees without leaves and with branches broken by shot, and over
all a gloomy, lowering sky, with snowflakes that are cutting.

We remove our hats as we enter this garden, for we know not upon whose
remains we may be treading. The graves will soon be marked, I doubt
not, but have not yet been, so one is not sure as one walks of not
having under foot some one of the dead who merits a crown.

In this house of the chancellor, spared as by a miracle, the besieged
lived helter-skelter, slept on a floor space the size of which was day
by day decreased by the damage done by shot and shell, and were in
imminent danger of death.

In the beginning--their number, alas, rapidly diminished--there were
sixty French sailors and twenty Austrians, meeting death, side by side,
with equally magnificent courage. To them were added a few French
volunteers, who took their turns on the barricades or on the roofs, and
two foreigners, M. and Madame Rosthorn of the Austrian legation. Our
officers in command of the defence were Lieutenant Darcy and midshipman
Herber; the latter was struck full in the face by a ball, and sleeps
to-day in the garden.

The horrible part of this siege was that no pity was to be expected
from the besiegers, if, starved, and at the end of their strength,
it became necessary for the besieged to surrender, it was death, and
death with atrocious Chinese refinements to prolong the paroxysms of
suffering.

Neither was there the hope of escape by some supreme sortie; they were
in the midst of a swarming city, they were enclosed in a labyrinth of
buildings that sheltered a crowd of enemies, and were still further
imprisoned by the feeling that, surrounding them, walling in the whole,
was the colossal black rampart of Pekin.

It was during the torrid period of the Chinese summer; it was often
necessary to fight while dying of thirst, blinded by dust, under a sun
as destructive as the balls, and with the constant sickening fear of
infection from dead bodies.

Yet a charming young woman was there with them,--an Austrian, to whom
should be given one of our most beautiful French crosses. Alone amongst
men in distress, she kept an even cheerfulness of the best kind, she
cared for the wounded, prepared food for the sick sailors with her own
hands, and then went off to aid in carrying bricks and sand for the
barricades or to take her turn as watch on the roof.

       *       *       *       *       *

Day by day the circle closed in upon the besieged as their ranks grew
thinner and the garden filled with the dead; gradually they lost
ground, although disputing with the enemy, who were legion, every piece
of wall, every pile of bricks.

And when one sees their little barricades hastily erected during
the night out of nothing at all, and knows that five or six sailors
succeeded in defending them (for five or six toward the end were all
that could be spared), it really seems as though there were something
supernatural about it all. As I walked through the garden with one of
its defenders, and he said to me, "At the foot of that little wall we
held out for so many days," and "In front of this little barricade we
resisted for a week," it seemed a marvellous tale of heroism.

And their last intrenchment! It was alongside the house,--a ditch dug
tentatively in a single night, banked up with a few poor sacks of
earth and sand; it was all they had to keep out the executioners, who,
scarcely six metres away, were threatening them with death from the top
of a wall.

Beyond is the "cemetery," that is, the corner of the garden in which
they buried their dead, until the still more terrible days when they
had to put them here and there, concealing the place for fear the
graves would be violated, in accordance with the terrible custom of
this place. It was a poor little cemetery whose soil had been pressed
and trampled upon in close combat, whose trees were shattered and
broken by shell. The interments took place under Chinese fire, and an
old white-headed priest--since a martyr, whose head was dragged in the
gutter--said prayers at the grave, in spite of the balls that whistled
about him, cutting and breaking the branches.

Toward the end their cemetery was the "contested region," after they
had little by little lost much ground, and they trembled for their
dead; the enemy had advanced to its very border; they watched and they
killed at close quarters over the sleeping warriors so hastily put to
rest. If the Chinese had reached this cemetery, and had scaled the last
frail trenches of sand and gravel in sacks made of old curtains, then
for all who were left there would have been horrible torture to the
sound of music and laughter, horrible dismemberment,--nails torn out,
feet torn off, disembowelling, and finally the head carried through the
streets at the end of a pole.

They were attacked from all sides and in every possible manner, often
at the most unexpected hours of the night. It usually began with cries
and the sudden noise of trumpets and tam-tams; around them thousands
of howling men would appear,--one must have heard the howlings of the
Chinese to imagine what their voices are; their very timbre chills your
soul. Gongs outside the walls added to the tumult.

Occasionally, from a suddenly opened hole in a neighboring house, a
pole twenty or thirty feet long, ablaze at the end with oakum and
petroleum, emerged slowly and silently, like a thing out of a dream.
This was applied to the roofs in the hope of setting them on fire.

They were also attacked from below, they heard dull sounds in the
earth, and understood that they were being undermined, that their
executioners might spring up from the ground at any moment; so that
it became necessary, at any cost, to attempt to establish countermines
to prevent this subterranean peril. One day, toward noon, two terrible
detonations, which brought on a regular tornado of plaster and dust,
shook the French legation, half burying under rubbish the lieutenant
in command of the defences and several of his marines. But this was
not all; all but two succeeded in getting clear of the stones and
ashes that covered them to the shoulders, but two brave sailors never
appeared again. And so the struggle continued, desperately, and under
conditions more and more frightful.

       *       *       *       *       *

And still the gentle stranger remained, when she might so easily have
taken shelter elsewhere,--at the English legation, for instance, where
most of the ministers with their families had found refuge; the balls
did not penetrate to them; they were at the centre of the quarter
defended by a few handfuls of brave soldiers, and could there feel
a certain security so long as the barricades held out. But no, she
remained and continued in her admirable rôle at that blazing point, the
French legation,--a point which was the key, the cornerstone of the
European quadrangle, whose capture would bring about general disaster.

One time they saw with their field glasses the posting of an imperial
edict commanding that the fire against foreigners cease. (What they
did _not_ see was that the men who put up the notices were attacked by
the crowd with knives.) Yet a certain lull, a sort of armistice did
follow; the attacks became less violent.

They saw that incendiaries were everywhere abroad; they heard
fusillades, cannonades, and prolonged cries among the Chinese; entire
districts were in flames; they were killing one another; their fury was
fermenting as in a pandemonium, and they were suffocated, stifled with
the smell of corpses.

Spies came occasionally with information to sell--always false
and contradictory--in regard to the relief expedition, which amid
ever-increasing anxiety was hourly expected. "It is here, it is there,
it is advancing," or "It has been defeated and is retreating," were the
announcements, yet it persisted in not appearing.

What, then, was Europe doing? Had they been abandoned? They continued,
almost without hope, to defend themselves in their restricted quarters.
Each day they felt that Chinese torture and death were closing in upon
them.

They began to lack for the essentials of life. It was necessary to
economize in everything, particularly in ammunition; they were growing
savage,--when they captured any Boxers, instead of shooting them they
broke their skulls with a revolver.

One day their ears, sharpened for all outside noises, distinguished a
continued deep, heavy cannonade beyond the great black ramparts whose
battlements were visible in the distance, and which enclosed them in a
Dantesque circle; Pekin was being bombarded! It could only be by the
armies of Europe come to their assistance.

Yet one last fear troubled their joy. Would not a supreme attack
against them be attempted, an effort be made to destroy them before the
allied troops could enter?

As a matter of fact they were furiously attacked, and this last day,
the day of their deliverance, cost the life of one of our officers,
Captain Labrousse, who went to join the Austrian commander in the
glorious little cemetery of the legation. But they kept up their
resistance, until all at once not a Chinese head was visible on the
barricades of the enemy; all was empty and silent in the devastation
about them; the Boxers were flying and the Allies were entering the
city!

       *       *       *       *       *

This first night of my arrival in Pekin was as melancholy as the nights
on the road, but in a more commonplace way, with more of _ennui_. The
workmen had just finished the walls of my room; the fresh plaster gave
forth a chilling dampness that penetrated to my very bones, and as the
room was empty, my servant spread my narrow mattress from the junk upon
the floor, and began to make a table out of some old boxes.

My hosts were good enough to have a stove hastily set up for me and
lighted, which called up a picture of European discomfort in some
wretched place in the country. How could one fancy oneself in China, in
Pekin itself, so near to mysterious enclosures, to palaces so full of
wonders?

As to the French minister, whom I am anxious to see, to convey to
him the admiral's communications, I learn that he, having no roof to
cover his head, has gone to seek shelter at the Spanish legation; and
furthermore, that he has typhoid fever, which is epidemic on account
of the poisonous condition of the water, so that for the present no
one can see him. So my stay in this damp place threatens to be more
prolonged than I anticipated. Through the window-panes covered with
moisture I gloomily look out onto a court filled with broken furniture,
where the twilight is falling and the snow.

Who could have foreseen that to-morrow, by an unexpected turn of
fortune, I should be sleeping on a great gilded, imperial bed in a
strange fairyland in the heart of the Forbidden City?


VIII

  FRIDAY, October 19.

I awake benumbed with the damp cold of my poor lodging; water drips
down the walls and the stove smokes.

I go off to perform a commission entrusted to me by the admiral for
the commander-in-chief of our land troops, General Voyron, who lives
in a small house near by. In the division of the mysterious Yellow
City, made by the heads of the allied troops, one of the palaces of the
Empress fell to our general. He installed himself there for the winter,
not far from the palace which was to be occupied by one of our allies,
Field-Marshal von Waldersee, and there he has graciously offered me
hospitality. He himself leaves for Tien-Tsin to-day, so for the week
or two which his trip will occupy I shall be there alone with his
aide-de-camp, one of my old comrades, who has charge of adapting this
residence from fairyland to the needs of military service.

What a change it will be from my plastered walls and charcoal stove!

My flight to the Yellow City will not take place till to-morrow
morning, for my friend, the aide-de-camp, expresses his kindly wish to
arrive before me at our palace, where some confusion reigns, and to
prepare the place for me.

So, having no further duties to-day, I accept the offer of one of the
members of the French legation to go with him to see the Temple of
Heaven. It has stopped snowing, the cold north wind has chased away the
clouds, and the sun is shining resplendently in the pale blue sky.

According to the map of Pekin, this Temple of Heaven is five or six
kilometres from here, and is the largest of all the temples. It
seems that it is situated in the midst of a park of venerable trees
surrounded by double walls. Up to the time of the war the spot was
unapproachable; the emperors came once a year and shut themselves up
there for a solemn sacrifice, preceded by purifications and preparatory
rites.

To reach it we have to go outside of all the ashes and ruins, outside
of the Tartar City where we are staying, through the gigantic gates of
the terrible walls, and penetrate to the Chinese City itself.

These two walled cities, which together make up Pekin, are two immense
quadrilaterals placed side by side; one, the Tartar City, contains in a
fortress-like enclosure the Yellow City, where I go to-morrow to take
up my abode.

[Illustration: CHEN-MUN GATE TO PEKIN]

As we come through the separating wall and see the Chinese City framed
by the colossal gateway, we are surprised to find a great artery,
stately and full of life as in the old days, running straight through
Pekin, which up to this time had seemed like a necropolis to us; the
gold decorations, the color, the thousand forms of monsters were all
unexpected, as well as the sudden aggression of noises, of music,
and voices. This life, this agitation, this Chinese splendor, are
inconceivable, inexplicable to us; such an abyss of dissimilarity lies
between this world and ours!

The great artery stretches on before us broad and straight,--a road
three or four kilometres long, leading finally to another monumental
gate which appears in the distance, surmounted by a dungeon with an
absurd roof. This is an opening through a wall beyond which is the
outside solitude. The low houses which line the street on both sides
seem to be made of gold lace, from top to bottom the open woodwork of
their façades glitters; they are finely carved at the top, all shining
with gold, with gargoyles similar to our own, and rows of gilded
dragons. Black stele covered with gold letters rise much higher than
the houses, from which jut out black and gold lacquered platforms for
the support of strange emblems with horns and claws and monsters' faces.

Through the clouds of dust, the gilding, the dragons, and the chimæras
glisten in the dusty sunlight as far as one can see. Above it all
triumphal arches of astonishing lightness mount heavenward across the
avenue; they are airy things of carved wood, with supports like the
masts of a ship, which repeat against the pale blue ether more strange
hostile forms, horns, claws, and fantastic beasts.

On the broad highway where one treads as upon ashes, there is a dull
rumbling of caravans and horses. The stupendous Mongolian camels, brown
and woolly, attached to one another in long endless files, pass slowly
and solemnly along, unceasingly like the waters of a river, raising as
they walk the powdery bed which stifles the sounds of this entire city.
They are going, who knows where, into the depths of the Thibetan or
Mongolian deserts, carrying in the same indefatigable and unconscious
way thousands of bales of merchandise; taking the place of canals and
rivers which convey barges and junks over immense distances. So heavy
is the dust raised by their feet that they can scarcely lift them; the
legs of these innumerable camels in procession, as well as the lower
parts of the houses, and the garments of the passers-by, are all vague
and confused in outline, as though seen through the thick smoke of a
forge, or through a shower of dark wool; but the backs of the great
beasts with their shaggy coats, emerging from the soft clouds near
the earth, are almost sharply defined, and the gold of the façades,
tarnished below, shines brightly at the height of the extravagant
cornices.

It seems like a phantasmagoric city with no real foundations, resting
upon a cloud, a heavy cloud, whereon gigantic sheep, with necks
enlarged by a thick brown fleece, move inoffensively.

Above the dust the sun shines clear and white, making resplendent the
cold, penetrating light in which things stand out incisively. Objects
that are high up above the ground stand out with absolute clearness.
The smallest of small monsters on the top of the triumphal arches may
be clearly seen, as well as the most delicate carving on the summits
of the stele; one can even count the teeth, the forked tongues, the
squinting eyes of the hundreds of gold chimæras which jut from the
roofs.

Pekin, the city of carvings and gildings, the city of claws and horns,
is still capable of creating illusions; on dry, sunny, windy days it
recovers something of its splendor under the dust of the steppes, under
the veil which then masks the shabbiness of its streets and the squalor
of its crowds.

Yet all is old and worn in spite of the gilding which still remains
bright. In this quarter there was continual fighting during the siege
of the legations, the Boxers destroying the homes of those whom they
suspected of sympathy for the barbarians.

The long avenue which we have been following for half an hour ends now
at an arched bridge of white marble, still a superb object; here the
houses come to an end, and on the opposite bank the gloomy steppes
begin.

This was the Bridge of the Beggars,--dangerous inhabitants, who,
before the capture of Pekin, ranged themselves on both sides of its
long railing and extorted money from the passers-by; they formed a
bold corporation with a king at its head, who often went armed. Their
place is unoccupied to-day; the vagrants departed after the battles and
massacres began.

Beyond this bridge a gray plain, empty and desolate, extends for two
kilometres, as far as the Great Wall, far beyond where Pekin ends. The
road, with its tide of caravans, goes straight on through this solitude
to the outside gate. Why should this desert be enclosed by the city's
walls? There is not a trace of previous constructions; it must always
have been as it is. No one is in sight on it; a few stray dogs, a few
rags, a few bones, and that is all.

For a long distance into this steppe there are sombre red walls at both
right and left which seem to enclose great cedar woods. The enclosure
at the right is that of the Temple of Agriculture; at the left is the
Temple of Heaven, for which we are bound. We plunge into this gloomy
region, leaving the dust and the crowds behind.

The enclosure around the Temple of Heaven has a circumference of more
than six kilometres; it is one of the most extensive in the whole
city, where everything is on an old-time scale of grandeur which
overpowers us to-day. The gate which was formerly impassable will
not close now, and we enter the wood of venerable trees--cedars,
arbor-vitæ, and willows--through which long avenues have been cut. This
spot, accustomed to silence and respect, is now profaned by barbarian
cavalry. Several thousand Indians sent out to China by England are
encamped there; their horses have trampled the grass; the turf and the
moss are filled with rubbish and manure. From a marble terrace where
incense to the gods was formerly burned, clouds of infected smoke were
rising, the English having chosen this place for the burning of cattle
that die of the plague, and for the manufacture of bone-black.

There are, as in all sacred woods, two enclosures. The secondary
temples, scattered amongst the cedars, precede the great central temple.

Never having been here before, we are guided by our judgment toward
something which must be it, higher than anything else, above the tops
of the trees,--a distant rotunda with a roof of blue enamel, surmounted
by a gold sphere which glistens in the sunshine.

The rotunda, when we finally reach it, proves to be the sanctuary
itself. Its approaches are silent; there are no more horses or
barbarian riders. It stands on a high esplanade of white marble reached
by a series of steps and by an "imperial path," reserved for the Son
of Heaven, who is not permitted to mount stairs. An "imperial path"
is an inclined plane, usually an enormous monolith of marble placed
at an easy angle, upon which the five-clawed dragon is sculptured in
bas-relief; the scales of the great heraldic animal, its coils and its
nails, serve to sustain the Emperor's steps and to prevent his feet,
dressed in silk, from slipping on the strange path reserved for Him
alone, and which no Chinese would dare to tread.

We mount irreverently by this "imperial path," scratching the fine
white scales of the dragon with our coarse shoes.

From the top of the lonely terrace, melancholy and everlastingly white
with the unchanging whiteness of marble, one sees above the trees of
the wood, great Pekin in its dust, which the sun is beginning to gild
as it gilds the tiny evening clouds.

[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_
THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN]

The gate of the temple is open, and guarded by an Indian trooper
with oblong sphynx-like eyes, as out of his element as we in this
ultra-Chinese and sacred environment. He salutes us and permits us to
enter.

The circular temple is bright with red and gold and has a roof of
blue enamel; it is a new temple built to replace a very old one which
was burned ten years ago. The altar is bare, it is bare everywhere;
plunderers have passed over it, leaving nothing but the marble
pavements, the beautiful lacquered ceilings, and the walls; the tall
columns of red lacquer, arranged in the form of a circle, all taper
uniformly and are decorated with garlands of gold flowers.

On the esplanade around it, weeds have pushed their way here and there
between the carved stones of the pavement, attesting the extreme
age of the marble in spite of its immaculate whiteness. It is a
commanding place, erected at great expense for the contemplation of the
sovereigns, and we linger, like the Sons of Heaven themselves, to gaze
upon it.

In our immediate vicinity the tops of the arbor-vitæ and the
cedars,--the great wood which envelops us in calm and silence,--come
first. Then, toward the north is the endless but obscure city, which
seems almost unreal; one divines rather than sees it, so hidden is it
in the smoke or fog which forms a gauzy veil. It might be a mirage were
it not for the monumental roofs of exaggerated proportions, whose tops
of shining enamel emerge from the fog here and there, clear and real;
these are palaces and pagodas. Beyond all this, very far away, is the
crest of the mountains of Mongolia, which to-night have no base and
seem to be cut out of blue and red paper high up in the air. Toward the
west is the gray steppe through which we have come; the slow procession
of caravans crossing it marks upon it as far as the eye can see an
uninterrupted brown path; we realize that this endless procession goes
on for hundreds of miles, and that on all the great roads of China,
to its most distant frontiers, similar processions are moving with
identical slowness.

It is the old unchanging method of communication between these men so
different from ourselves,--men with perseverance and infinite patience,
for whom the march of time, which unsteadies us, does not exist; it
forms for them the arterial circulation of this boundless empire, where
four or five hundred million brains--the reverse of our own and forever
incomprehensible to us--live and speculate.




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.

[Illustration: 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; phoenixes 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 manoeuvre 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.

[Illustration:
_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.

[Illustration:
_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.

He was good enough to keep me with him for an hour. A well-dressed
Chinese served us with tea while he told me of the recent tragedy;
of the defence of fourteen hundred metres of wall, organized out of
nothing by a young ensign and thirty sailors, of their holding out for
two or three months right in the heart of an enflamed city, against
thousands of enemies wild with fury. Although he tells it all in a
very low tone, his speech grows warmer, and vibrates with a sort of
soldierly ruggedness as some emotion chokes him, especially whenever he
mentions Ensign Henry.

Ensign Henry died, pierced by two balls, at the end of the last
great fight. Of his thirty sailors many were killed, and almost all
were wounded. This story of a summer should be written somewhere in
letters of gold, lest it should be too quickly forgotten; it should be
attested, lest some day it should no longer be believed.

The sailors under the command of this young officer were not picked
men; they were the first that came, selected hap-hazard on board ship.
A few noble priests shared their vigils, a few brave seminarists took
a turn under their orders, besides a horde of Chinese armed with
miserable old guns. But the sailors were the heart and soul of this
obstinate defence; there was neither weakening nor complaint in the
face of death, which was at all times present in its most atrocious
forms.

An officer and ten Italian soldiers brought hither by chance also
fought heroically, leaving six of their number among the dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

Oh, the heroism, the lowly heroism of these poor Chinese Christians,
both Catholic and Protestant, who sought protection in the bishop's
palace, knowing that one word of abjuration, one reverence to a
Buddhist image would ensure their lives, yet who remained there,
faithful, in spite of gnawing hunger and almost certain martyrdom! And
at the same time, outside of these walls which protected them in a
measure, fifteen thousand of their brothers were burned, dismembered,
and thrown piecemeal into the river on account of the new faith which
they would not renounce.

Unheard-of things happened during this siege: a bishop,[1] followed
by an ensign and four marines, went to wrest a cannon from the
enemy, balls grazing their heads; theological students manufactured
powder from the charred branches of the trees in the close, and from
saltpetre, which they scaled the walls to steal at night from a Chinese
arsenal.

They lived in a continual tumult under a continual fire of stones and
shot; all the marble bell-towers of the cathedral, riddled by shells,
tottered and fell piecemeal upon their heads. At all hours, without
truce, bullets rained in the court, breaking in the roofs and weakening
the walls. At night especially balls fell like hailstones to the
sound of the Boxers' trumpets and frightful gongs. And all the while
their death-cries, "Cha! Cha!" (Let us kill, let us kill) or "Chao!
Chao!" (Let us burn, let us burn) filled the city like the cries of an
enormous pack of hounds.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was in July and August under a burning sky, and they lived
surrounded by fire; incendiaries sprinkled their roofs and their
entrances with petroleum by means of pumps and threw lighted torches
onto them; they were obliged to run from one place to another and to
climb up with ladders and wet blankets to put out the flames. They had
to run, run all the time, when they were so exhausted and their heads
so heavy from having had no food, that they could scarcely stand.

Even the good Sisters had to organize a kind of race for the women and
children, who were stupefied from fear and suffering. It was these
sublime women who decided when it was necessary to change positions
according to the direction from which the shells came and who chose the
least dangerous moment to fly, with bowed heads, across a court, and to
take refuge elsewhere. A thousand women without wills or ideas of their
own, with poor dying babies clinging to their breasts, followed them;
a human eddy, advancing, receding, pushing, in order to keep in sight
the white caps of their protectors.

They had to run when, from lack of food, they could scarcely stand, and
when a supreme lassitude impelled them to lie down on the ground to
await death! They had to become accustomed to detonations that never
ceased, to perpetual noise, to shot and shell, to the fall of stones,
to seeing one of their number fall bathed in his own blood! Hunger was
the most intolerable of all. They made soup of the leaves and young
branches of the trees, of dahlia roots from the gardens and of lily
bulbs. The poor Chinese would say humbly, "We must keep the little
grain we have left for the sailors who are protecting us, and whose
need of strength is greater than ours."

The bishop told of a poor woman who had been confined the previous
night, who dragged herself after him imploring: "Bishop, bishop, give
me a handful of grain so that my milk will come and my child may not
die!"

All night long the feeble voices of several hundred children were
heard in the church moaning for lack of food. To use the expression of
Monsignor Favier, it was like "the bleatings of a flock of lambs about
to be sacrificed." But their cries diminished, for they were buried at
the rate of fifteen in a single day.

They knew that not far away in the European legations a similar drama
was being enacted, but, needless to say, there was no communication
between them; and if any young Chinese Christian offered to go there
with a message from the bishop asking for help, or at least for news,
it was not long before they saw his head, with the note pinned to his
cheek, reappear above the wall at the end of a rod garnished with his
entrails.

Not only did bullets rain by the hundreds every day, but the Boxers put
anything that fell into their furious hands into their cannon,--stones,
bricks, bits of iron, old kettles. The besieged had no doctors; they
hopelessly, and as best they could, bound up great horrible wounds,
great holes in the breast. The arms of the voluntary grave-diggers were
exhausted with digging places in which to bury the dead, or parts of
the dead. And the cry of the infuriated mob went on, "Cha! Cha!" (Let
us kill, let us kill!) to the grim sounds of their iron gongs and the
blasts of their trumpets.

Mines went off in different localities, swallowing up people and bits
of wall. In the gulf made by one of them fifty little babies in their
cradles disappeared. Their sufferings at least were over. Each time a
new breach was made the Boxers threw themselves upon it, and it became
a yawning opportunity for torture and death.

But Ensign Henry was always there; with such of his sailors as had
been spared he was seen rushing to the place where he was needed,
to the exact spot where the most effective work could be done,--on
a roof or on the crest of a wall,--and they killed and they killed,
without losing a ball, every shot dealing death. Fifty, a hundred of
them, crouched in heaps on the ground; priests and Chinese women, as
well as men, brought stones, bricks, marble, no matter what, from the
cathedral, and with the mortar they had ready they closed the breach
and were saved again until the next mine exploded!

But they came to the end of their strength, the meagre ration of soup
grew less and less, and they could do no more.

The bodies of Boxers, piled up along the vast enclosure which they so
desperately defended, filled the air with a pestilential odor; dogs
were attracted and gathered in moments of calm for a meal. During the
latter part of the time they killed these dogs from the tops of the
walls and pulled them in by means of a hook at the end of a cord, and
their meat was saved for the sick and for nursing mothers.

On the day when our soldiers at last entered the place, guided by the
white-haired bishop standing on the wall and waving the French flag, on
the day when they threw themselves with tears of joy in one another's
arms, there remained just enough food to make, with the addition of
many leaves, one last meal.

"It seemed," said Monsignor Favier, "as though Providence had counted
the grains of rice."

Then he spoke once more of Ensign Henry. "The only time during the
entire siege," he said, "the only time we wept was when he died. He
remained on his feet giving his orders, although mortally wounded
in two places. When the fight was over he came down from the breach
and fell exhausted in the arms of two of the priests; then we all
wept with the sailors, who had come up and surrounded him. He was so
charming, simple, good, and gentle with even the humblest. To be a
soldier such as he was, to make yourself loved like a little child,
could there be anything more beautiful?" Then after a silence he added,
"And he had faith; every morning he used to come with us to prayers and
to communion, saying with a smile, 'One must be always ready.'"

It is quite dark before I take leave of the bishop, on whom I had
intended to pay a short call. All around him now, of course, everything
is desolate and in ruins; there are no houses left, and the streets
cannot even be traced. I go away with my two servants, our revolvers
and one little lantern; I go thinking of Ensign Henry, of his glory,
of his deliverance, of everything rather than the insignificant detail
of the road to be followed among the ruins. Besides, it is not far,
scarcely a kilometre.

A violent wind extinguishes the candle in its paper sheath, and
envelops us in dust so thick that we cannot see two steps in front
of us; it is like a thick fog. So, never having been in this quarter
before, we are lost, and go stumbling along over stones, over rubbish,
over broken pottery, and human bones.

We can scarcely see the stars for the thick cloud of dust, and we don't
know which way to go.

Suddenly we get the smell of a dead body and we recognize the ditch we
discovered yesterday morning just in time to keep from falling into it.
So all is well; only two hundred metres more and we shall be at home in
our glass palace.


XI

  FRIDAY, October 26.

Leaving my palace a little late, I hasten to keep the appointment made
for me by Li-Hung-Chang for nine o'clock in the morning.

An African chasseur accompanies me. Following a Chinese outrider sent
to guide us, we start off at a rapid trot through the dust and silence
under the sun's white rays, along the great walls and marshy moats of
the Emperor's Palace.

When we get outside of the Yellow City noise and life begin again.
After the magnificent solitude to which we have become accustomed,
whenever we return to everybody's Pekin, we are surprised to find
such a roar among these humble crowds; it is hard to realize that the
woods, the lakes, the horizons, which play at being the real country,
are artificial things surrounded on all sides by the most swarming of
cities.

It is incontestable that the people are returning in crowds to Pekin.
(According to Monsignor Favier, the Boxers in particular are returning
in all kinds of costumes and disguises.) From day to day the number of
silk gowns, blue cotton gowns, slanting eyes, and queues increases.

We must move faster in spite of all the people, for it seems it is
still some distance, and time is passing. Our outrider appears to be
galloping. We cannot see him, for here the streets are even dustier
than in the Yellow City; we see only the cloud of dust that envelops
his little Mongolian horse, and we follow that.

At the end of half an hour's rapid riding the dust cloud stops in front
of a ramshackle old house in a narrow street that leads nowhere. Is it
possible that Li-Hung-Chang, rich as Aladdin, the owner of palaces and
countless treasures, one of the most enduring favorites of the Empress
and one of the glories of China, lives here?

       *       *       *       *       *

For reasons unknown to me, the entrance is guarded by Cossack soldiers
in poor uniforms but with naïve rosy faces. The room into which I am
taken is dilapidated and untidy; there is a table in the middle of it
and two or three rather well-carved ebony chairs; but that is all. At
one end is a chaos of trunks, bags, packages, and bedding, all tied
up as though in preparation for flight. The Chinese who comes to the
door, in a beautiful gown of plum-colored silk, gives me a seat and
offers me tea. He is the interpreter, and speaks French correctly, even
elegantly. He tells me that some one has gone to announce me to his
Highness.

At a sign from another Chinese he presently conducts me into a second
court, and there, at the door leading into a reception-room, a tall
old man advances to meet me. At his right and his left are silk-robed
servants, both a whole head shorter than he is, on whose shoulders he
leans. He is colossal, with very prominent cheek-bones, and small, very
small, quick and searching eyes. He is an exaggeration of the Mongolian
type, with a certain beauty withal, and the air of a great personage,
although his furry gown of an indefinite color is worn and spotted. (I
have been forewarned that in these days of abomination his Highness
believes that he should affect poverty.) The large shabby room where he
receives me is, like the first one, strewn with trunks and packages. We
take arm-chairs opposite each other, while servants place cigarettes,
tea, and champagne on a table between us. At first we stare at each
other like two beings from different worlds.

After inquiring as to my age and the amount of my income (one of the
rules of Chinese politeness), he bows again, and conversation begins.

       *       *       *       *       *

When we have finished discussing the burning questions of the day,
Li-Hung-Chang expresses sympathy for China and for ruined Pekin.
"Having visited the whole of Europe," he says, "I have seen the museums
of all your great capitals. Pekin had her own also, for the whole
Yellow City was a museum begun centuries ago, and may be compared with
the most beautiful of your own. And now it is destroyed."

He questions me as to what we are doing over in the Palace of the
North, informs himself by adroit questioning as to whether we are
injuring anything there. He knows as well as I do what we are
doing, for he has spies everywhere, even among our workmen; yet his
enigmatical face shows some satisfaction when I confirm his knowledge
of the fact that we are destroying nothing.

When the audience is over, and we have shaken hands, Li-Hung-Chang,
still leaning on his two servants, comes with me as far as the centre
of the court. As I turn at the threshold to make my final bow, he
courteously recalls to my memory my offer to send him my account of
my stay in Pekin,--if ever I find time to write it. In spite of the
perfect grace of his reception of me, due especially to my title of
"Mandarin of Letters," this old prince of the Chinese Arabian Nights'
tales, in his threadbare garments and in his wretched surroundings, has
not ceased to seem to me disturbing, inscrutable, and possibly secretly
disdainful and ironical, all the time disguising his real self.

I now make my way across two kilometres of rubbish to the quarters of
the European legations in order to take leave of the French minister,
who is still ill in bed, and to get from him his commissions for the
admiral, for I must leave Pekin not later than the day after to-morrow,
and go back to my ship.

Just as I was mounting my horse again, after this visit, to return to
the Yellow City, some one from the legation came out and very kindly
gave me some precise and very curious information which will enable
me this evening to purloin two tiny shoes that once belonged to the
Empress of China, and to take them away as a part of the pillage. On a
shady island in the southern part of the Lake of the Lotus is a frail,
almost hidden palace, where the sovereign slept that last agonizing
night before her frantic flight, disguised as a beggar. _The second
room to the left, at the back of the second court_ of this palace, was
her room, and there, it seems, under a carved bed, lie two little red
silk shoes embroidered with butterflies and flowers, which must have
belonged to her.

[Illustration: AN IMPERIAL PALACE]

I return to the Yellow City as fast as I can, breakfast hurriedly in
the glass gallery,--whence the wonderful treasures are already being
carried to their new quarters to make way for the carpenters, who soon
begin their work here,--and straightway depart with my two faithful
servants, on foot this time, in search of the island, the palace, and
the pair of small shoes.

The one o'clock sun is burning the dry paths, and the cedars overhead
are gray with dust. About two kilometres to the south of our residence
we find the island without difficulty. It is in a region where the
lake divides into various little arms, spanned by marble bridges with
marble railings entwined with green. The palace stands there light and
charming, half concealed among the trees, on a terrace of white marble.
The roofs of green faience touched with gilt and the openwork walls
shine forth with new and costly ornamentation from amid the dusty green
of the old cedars. It must have been a marvel of grace and daintiness,
and it is adorable as it is, deserted and silent.

Through the doors opening onto the white steps that lead up to it, a
perfect cascade of débris of all kinds is tumbling,--boxes of imperial
porcelains, boxes of gold lacquer, small bronze dragons upside
down, bits of rose-colored silk, and bunches of artificial flowers.
Barbarians have been this way,--but which? Surely not our soldiers, for
this part of the Yellow City was never placed in their hands; they are
not familiar with it.

The interior courts, from which at our approach a flock of crows rise,
are in the same condition. The pavement is strewn with delicate, rather
feminine things, which have been ruthlessly destroyed. And so recent is
this destruction that the light stuffs, the silk flowers, the parts of
costumes have not even lost their freshness.

"At the back of the second court, the second room to the left!" Here it
is! There remains a throne, some arm-chairs, and a big, low bed, carved
by the hand of genius. Everything has been ransacked. The window-glass,
through which the sovereign could gaze upon the reflections of the
lake and the pink blossoms of the lotus, the marble bridges, the
islands, the whole landscape devised and realized for her eyes, has
been broken; and a fine white silk, with which the walls were hung, and
on which some exquisite artist had painted in pale tints, larger than
nature, other lotus blossoms, languishing, bent by the autumn wind, and
strewing their petals, has been torn in shreds.

Under the bed, where I look immediately, is a pile of manuscript and
charming bits of silk. My two servants, foraging with sticks, like
rag-pickers, soon succeed in finding what I seek,--the two comical
little red shoes, one after the other.

They are not the absurd, doll-like shoes worn by the Chinese women who
compress their toes; the Empress, being a Tartar princess, did not
deform her feet, which were, however, very small by nature. No, these
are embroidered slippers of natural shape, whose extravagance lies
in the heels, which are thirty centimetres high and extend over the
entire sole, growing larger at the bottom, like the base of a statue,
to prevent the wearer from falling; they are little blocks of white
leather of the most improbable description.

I had no idea that a woman's shoes could take up so much space. How
to get them away without looking like pillagers in the eyes of the
servants and guards we meet on the way back is the question?

Osman suggests suspending them by strings to Renaud's belt so that
they will hang concealed by his long winter coat. This is an admirable
scheme; he can even walk--we make him try it--without giving rise to
suspicion. I feel no remorse, and I fancy that if she, from afar, could
witness the scene, the still beautiful Empress would be the first to
smile.

We now hasten our steps back to the Palace of the Rotunda, where I have
scarcely two hours of daylight for my work before the cold and the
night come on.

Each time that I return to this palace I am charmed with the sonorous
silence of my high esplanade and with the top of the crenellated wall
surrounding it,--an artificial spot whence one commands an extended
view of artificial landscape, the sight of which has always been
forbidden, and which, until lately, no European has ever seen.

Everything about the place is so Chinese that one feels as though
it were the heart of the yellow country, the very quintessence of
China. These high gardens were a favorite resort for the ultra-Chinese
reveries of an uncompromising Empress who possibly dreamed of shutting
her country off from the rest of the world, as in olden times, but who
to-day sees her empire crumbling at her feet, rotten to the core, like
her myriads of temples and gilded wooden gods.

The magical hour here is when the enormous red ball, which the Chinese
sun appears to be on autumn evenings, lights up the roofs of the Violet
City before it disappears. I never fail to leave my kiosk at this hour
to see once more these effects, unique in all the world.

Compared to this, what barbaric ugliness is offered by a bird's-eye
view of one of our European cities,--a mass of ugly gables, tiles, and
dirty roofs full of chimneys and stove-pipes, and, as a last horror,
electric wires forming a black network! In China, where they are all
too scornful of pavements and sewers, everything which rises into the
air, into the domain of the ever-watchful and protecting spirits, is
always impeccable. And this immense Imperial retreat, empty to-day, now
displays for me alone the splendor of its enamelled roofs.

In spite of their age, these pyramids of yellow faience, carved with
a grace unknown to us, are still brilliant under the red sun. At each
of the corners of the topmost one the ornaments simulate great wings;
lower down, toward the outside, are rows of monsters in poses which
are copied and recopied, century after century, sacred and unchanging.
These pyramids of yellow faience are brilliant. From far off, against
the ashy blue sky, clouded by the everlasting dust, it looks like a
city of gold; then, as the sun sinks, like a city of copper.

First the silence of it all; then the croakings that begin the moment
the ravens go to rest; then the death-like cold that wraps this
magnificence of enamel as in a winding-sheet as soon as the sun goes
down.

To-night again, when we leave the Rotunda Palace, we pass the Palace of
the North without stopping, and go on to Monsignor Favier's.

He receives me in the same white room, where valises and
travelling-bags are lying about on the furniture. The bishop leaves
to-morrow for Europe, which he has not seen for twelve years. He is
going to Rome to see the Pope, and then to France, to raise money
for his suffering missions. His great work of over forty years is
annihilated, fifteen thousand of his Christian converts massacred; his
churches, chapels, hospitals, schools, are all destroyed, razed to the
ground; his cemeteries have been violated, and yet, discouraged at
nothing, he wishes to begin all over again.

As he conducts me across his garden I admire the beautiful energy with
which he says, pointing to the damaged cathedral with its broken cross,
which is the only building left standing, gloomily outlined against the
evening sky: "I will rebuild, larger and higher, all the churches they
have thrown down, and I hope that each movement of violence and hatred
against us may carry Christianity one step further on in their country.
Possibly they will again destroy my churches; who knows? If so, I will
build them up again, and we shall see whether they or I will be the
first to weary of it."

He seems very great to me in his determination and in his faith, and I
understand that China must reckon with this apostle of the vanguard.


XII

  SATURDAY, October 27.

I wanted to see the Violet City and its throne rooms once more before
going away, and to enter it this time, not by round-about ways and back
doors and secret posterns, but by the great avenues and gates that have
been for centuries closed, so that I might try to imagine beneath the
destruction of to-day what must have been in former times the splendor
of the sovereigns' arrival.

No one of our European capitals has been conceived and laid out with
such unity and audacity, with the idea of increasing the magnificence
of a pageant always dominant, especially that of imparting an imposing
effect to the appearance of the Emperor. The throne is here the central
idea. This city, as regular as a geometrical figure, seems to have been
created solely to enclose and glorify the throne of the Son of Heaven,
ruler of four hundred millions of souls; to be its peristyle, to lead
up to it by colossal avenues which recall Thebes or Babylon. It is
easy to understand why the Chinese ambassadors, who came to visit our
kings in the times when their immense country was flourishing, were not
particularly dazzled by the sight of the Paris of those days, of the
Louvre or of Versailles.

The southern gate of Pekin, by which the processions arrive, lies in
the axis of this throne, once so awe-inspiring, and six kilometres
of avenues, with gateways and monsters, lead up to it. When one has
crossed the wall of the Chinese City by this southern gate, first
passing two huge sanctuaries,--the Temple of Agriculture and the Temple
of Heaven,--one follows for half an hour the great artery that leads
to a second boundary wall, that of the Tartar City, higher and more
commanding than the first. An enormous gate looms up, surmounted by a
black dungeon, and beyond this the avenue goes on, flawlessly straight
and magnificent, to a third gate in a third wall of a blood-red
color,--the wall of the Imperial City.

Even after entering the Imperial City it is still some distance to the
throne to which one is advancing in a straight line,--to this throne
which dominates everything and which formerly could never have been
seen; but here its presence is indicated by the surroundings. From
this point the number of marble monsters increases; lions of colossal
size grin from their pedestals at right and at left; there are marble
obelisks--monoliths encircled with dragons--with the same heraldic
beast always seated at the summit,--a thin kind of jackal with long
ears, which has the appearance of barking or howling in the direction
of the extraordinary thing which is on ahead, namely, the throne of
the Emperor. Walls are multiplied,--blood-colored walls thirty metres
thick,--which cross the road, and are surmounted by queer roofs and
pierced by low gates,--narrow ambushes that send a thrill of terror to
your heart. The defending moats at the foot of the walls have marble
bridges, triple like the gates, and from here on the road is paved with
superb big slabs crossing one another at an angle, like the boards of
a parquetry floor.

After it reaches the Imperial City, this avenue, already a league in
length, is absolutely unfrequented, and goes on even wider than before
between long regular buildings intended for soldiers' barracks. No
more little gilded houses, no more small shops, no more crowds! At
this last imprisoning rampart the life of the people stops, under the
oppression of the throne; and at the very end of this solitary roadway,
watched over by the slender marble beasts surmounting the obelisks, the
forbidden centre of Pekin becomes visible, the retreat of the Son of
Heaven.

The last wall which appears ahead of us--that of the Violet City--is,
like the preceding ones, the color of dried blood; there are numerous
watch-towers upon it, whose roofs of dark enamel curve up at the
corners in wicked little points. The triple gates are too small, too
low for the height of the wall, too deep and tunnel-like. Oh, the
heaviness, the hugeness of it all, and the strangeness of the design
of the roofs, so characteristic of the peculiarities of the yellow
colossus!

       *       *       *       *       *

Things must have begun to go to pieces here centuries ago; the red
plaster of the walls has fallen in places, or it has become spotted
with black; the marble of the obelisks and the great squinting lions
could only have grown so yellow under the rains of innumerable seasons,
and the green that pushes through wherever the granite is joined, marks
with lines of velvet the design of the pavement.

The last triple gates, given over since the defeat to a detachment of
American soldiers, will open to-day for any barbarian, such as I, who
carries a properly signed permit.

Passing through the tunnels, one enters an immense marble whiteness,--a
whiteness that is turning into ivory yellow and is stained by the
autumn leaves and the wild growth that has invaded this deserted spot.
The place is paved with marble, and straight ahead, rising like a wall,
is an extraordinary marble terrace, on which stands the throne room,
with its sturdy blood-red columns and its roof of old enamel. This
white enclosure is like a cemetery--so much green has pushed its way
up between the paving-stones,--where the silence is broken only by the
magpies and the crows.

On the ground are ranged blocks of bronze all similar and cone-like
in shape; they are simply placed there among the brown leaves and
branches, and can be moved about as if they were ninepins. They are
used during the formal entry of a procession to mark the line for the
flags and the places where even the most magnificent visitors must
prostrate themselves when the Son of Heaven deigns to appear, like a
god, on top of the marble terrace, surrounded by banners, and in one
of those costumes with breastplate of gold, monsters' heads on the
shoulders, and gold wings in the headdress, whose superhuman splendor
has been transmitted to us by means of the paintings in the Temple of
Ancestors.

One mounts to these terraces by staircases of Babylonian proportions
and by an "imperial path," reserved for the Emperor alone, that is to
say, by an inclined plane made of one block of marble,--one of those
untransportable blocks which men in the past possessed the secret of
moving. The five-clawed dragon displays his sculptured coils from the
top to the bottom of this stone, which cuts the big white staircase
into two equal parts, of which it forms the centre, and extends right
to the foot of the throne. No Chinese would dare to walk on this "path"
by which the emperors descend, pressing the high soles of their shoes
on the scales of the heraldic beast, in order not to slip.

The room at the top, open to-day to all the winds that blow and to all
the birds of heaven, has, by way of roof, the most prodigious mass of
yellow faience that there is in Pekin, and the most bristling with
monsters; the ornaments at the corners are shaped like big extended
wings. Inside, needless to say, there is that blaze of reddish gold
which always pursues one in Chinese palaces. On the ceiling, which is
of an intricate design, dragons are everywhere entwined, entangled,
interwoven; their claws and their horns appear, mingled with the
clouds, and one of them, which is detached from the mass and seems
ready to fall, holds in his hanging jaw a gold sphere directly above
the throne. The throne, which is of red and gold lacquer, rises in the
centre of this shadowy place on a sort of platform; two large screens
made of feathers, emblems of sovereignty, stand behind it, and along
the steps which lead up to it are incense-burners similar to those
placed in pagodas at the feet of the gods.

Like the avenues through which I have come, like the series of bridges
and the triple gates, this throne is in the exact centre of Pekin, and
represents its soul; were it not for all these walls, all these various
enclosures, the Emperor, seated there on this pedestal of lacquer and
marble, could see to the farthest extremities of the city, to the
farthest openings in the surrounding walls; the tributary sovereigns
who come there, the ambassadors, the armies, from the moment of their
entrance into Pekin by the southern gate, would be, so to speak, under
the inspiration of his invisible eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the floor a thick carpet of imperial yellow reproduces in a much
worn design the battle of the chimæras, the nightmare carved upon the
ceiling; it is a carpet made in one piece, an enormous carpet of a wool
so thick and close that one's feet sink into it as on a grassy lawn;
but it is torn, eaten by moths, with piles of gray dung lying about on
it in patches,--for magpies, pigeons, and crows have made their nests
in the roof, and on my arrival the place is filled with the whirring of
frightened wings up high against the shining beams, amongst the golden
dragons and the clouds.

The incomprehensible fact about this palace, to us uninitiated
barbarians, is that there are three of these rooms exactly alike, with
the same throne, the same carpet, the same ornaments, in the same
places; they are preceded by the same great marble courts and are
constructed on the same marble terraces; you reach them by the same
staircases and by the same imperial paths.

Why should there be three of them? For, of necessity, the first
conceals the two others, and in order to pass from the first to the
second, or from the second to the third, you must go down each time
into a vast gloomy court without any view and then come up again
between the piles of ivory-colored marble, so superb, yet so monotonous
and oppressive!

There must be some mysterious reason connected with the use of the
number three. This repetition produced on our disordered imaginations
an effect analogous to that of the three similar sanctuaries and the
three similar courts in the great Temple of the Lamas.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_
PRICELESS PORCELAINS AND BRONZES IN THE THIRD PALACE, FORBIDDEN CITY]

I had already seen the private apartments of the young Emperor.
Those of the Empress--for she had apartments here too, in addition
to the frail palaces her fancy had scattered over the parks of the
Yellow City--those of the Empress are less gloomy and much less dark.
Room after room exactly alike, with large windows and superb yellow
enamelled roofs. Each one has its marble steps, guarded by two lions
all shining with gold, and the little gardens which separate them are
filled with bronze ornaments, heraldic beasts, phoenixes, or crouching
monsters.

Inside are yellow silks and square arm-chairs of the form consecrated
by time, unchanging as China itself. On the chests, on the tables, a
quantity of precious articles are placed in small glass cases,--because
of the perpetual dust of Pekin,--and this makes them as cheerless as
mummies and casts over the apartment the chill of a museum. There are
many artificial bouquets of chimerical flowers of neutral shades in
amber, jade, agate, and moonstones.

The great and inimitable luxury of these palace rooms consists of the
series of ebony arches so carved as to seem a bower of dark leaves. In
what far-away forest did the trees grow that permitted such groves to
be created out of one single piece? And by means of what implements and
what patience are they able to carve each stem and each leaf of light
bamboo, or each fine needle of the cedar, out of the very heart of the
tree, and to add to them birds and butterflies of the most exquisite
workmanship?

Behind the sleeping-room of the Empress a kind of dark oratory is
filled with Buddhistic divinities on altars. An exquisite odor still
remains, left behind her by the beautiful, passionate, elegant old
woman who was queen. Among these gods is a small creature made of very
old wood, quite worn and dull from the loss of gilding, who wears about
his neck a collar of fine pearls. In front of him is a bunch of dried
flowers,--a last offering, one of the guardian eunuchs informs me, made
by the Empress to this little old Buddha, who was her favorite fetish,
at the supreme moment before her flight from the Violet City.

To-day I have reached this retreat by a very different route from
the one I took on my first pilgrimage here, and in going out I must
now pass through the quarters where all is walled and rewalled, the
gates barricaded and guarded by more and more horrible monsters. Are
there hidden princesses and treasures here? There is always the same
bloody color on the walls, the same yellow faience on the roofs, and
more horns, claws, cruel forms, hyena smiles, projecting teeth, and
squinting eyes than ever; the most unimportant things, like bolts and
locks, have features that simulate hatred and death.

Everything is perishing from old age; the stones are worn away, the
wooden doors are falling into dust. There are some old shadowy courts
that are given up to white-bearded octogenarian servants, who have
built cabins, where they live like recluses, occupied in training
magpies or in cultivating sickly flowers in pots under the eyes of the
everlasting grinning old marble and bronze beasts. No cloistered green,
no monk's cell, was ever half so gloomy as these little courts, so shut
in and so dark, overshadowed for centuries by the uncontrolled caprices
of the Chinese emperors. The inexorable sentence, "Leave hope behind,
all those who enter here," seems to belong here; as one proceeds, the
passages grow narrower and more intricate; it seems as though there
were no escape, as though the great locks on the doors would refuse to
work, as though the walls would close in upon and crush you.

Yet here I am almost outside, outside the interior wall and through the
massive gates that quickly close behind me. Now I am between the second
rampart and the first, both equally terrible. I am on the road which
makes a circle around this city,--a sort of ominous passageway of great
length that runs between two dark red walls and which seems to meet in
the distance ahead of me. Human bones and old rags that have been parts
of the clothing of soldiers are scattered here and there, and one sees
two or three crows and one of the flesh-eating dogs prowling about.

When the boards which barricade the outside gate are let down for me
(the gate guarded by the Japanese), I discover, as though on awakening
from a dreadful dream, that I am in the park of the Yellow City, in
open space under the great cedars.


XIII

  SUNDAY, October 28.

The Island of Jade, on the Lake of the Lotus, is a rock, artificial
perhaps, in spite of its mountainous proportions. Old trees cling to
its sides, and old temples loom up toward the sky, while crowning all
is a sort of tower or dungeon of colossal size and of a mysterious
Baroque design. It may be seen from all points; its excessively Chinese
outlines dominate Pekin, and high up on it stands a terrible idol whose
threatening attitude and hideous smile look down upon the city. This
idol our soldiers call the "big devil of China."

This morning I am climbing up to visit this "big devil."

A bridge of white marble across the reeds and lotus gives access to the
Island of Jade. Both ends of the bridge are guarded, needless to say,
by marble monsters who leer and squint at any one who has the audacity
to pass. The shores of the island rise abruptly underneath the cedar
branches, and one begins immediately to climb by means of steps and
rock-cut paths. Among the severe trees is a series of marble terraces
with bronze incense-burners and occasional pagodas, out of whose
obscurity enormous golden idols shine forth.

This Island of Jade, on account of its position of strategic
importance, is under military occupation by a company of our marines.

As there is no shelter other than the pagodas, and no camp beds other
than the sacred tables, our soldiers have had to put out of doors the
entire population of secondary gods in order to make room to lie down
on the beautiful red tables at night, and have left only the big,
solemn idols on their thrones. So here they are by the hundreds, by the
thousands, lined up on the white terraces like playthings. Inside the
temples the guns of our men are lying about, and their blankets and
their clothing hang on the walls, all around the big idols who have
been left in their places. What a heavy smell of leather they have
already introduced into these closed sanctuaries, accustomed only to
the odor of sandalwood and incense!

       *       *       *       *       *

Through the twisted branches of the cedars the horizon, which is
occasionally visible, is all green, turning to an autumn brown. It is
a wood, an infinite wood, out of which here and there roofs of yellow
faience emerge. This wood is Pekin; not at all as one imagines it, but
Pekin seen from the top of a very sacred place where no Europeans were
ever allowed to come.

The rocky soil grows thinner and thinner as one rises toward the "big
devil of China," as one approaches the peak of the isolated cone known
as the Island of Jade.

This morning I meet, as I climb, a curious band of pilgrims who are
coming down; they are Lazarist missionaries in mandarin costume,
wearing long queues. With them are several young Chinese Catholic
priests who seem frightened at being there; as though, in spite of the
Christianity superimposed upon their hereditary beliefs, they were
committing some sacrilege by their very presence in so forbidden a spot.

At the foot of the dungeon which crowns these rocks is the kiosk of
faience and marble where the "big devil" dwells. It is high up on a
narrow terrace in the pure, clear air, from which one overlooks a mass
of trees scarcely veiled to-day by the usual mist of dust and sun.

I enter the kiosk where the "big devil" stands, the sole guest of this
aerial region. Oh, horrible creature that he is! He is of superhuman
size, cast in bronze. Like Shiva, god of death, he dances on dead
bodies; he has five or six atrocious faces whose multiplied grins are
almost intolerable; he wears a collar of skulls, and is gesticulating
with forty arms that hold instruments of torture or heads severed from
their bodies.

Such is the protecting divinity chosen by the Chinese to watch over
this city, and placed high above all their pyramidal faience roofs,
high above all their pagodas and towers, as we in times of faith would
have placed the Christ or the Blessed Virgin. It is a tangible symbol
of their profound cruelty, the index of the inexplicable cleft in the
brain of these people ordinarily so tractable and gentle, so open to
the charm of little children and of flowers, but who are capable all
at once of gleefully becoming executioners and torturers of the most
horrible description.

At my feet Pekin seems like a wood! I had been told of this
incomprehensible effect, but my expectations are surpassed. Outside
of the parks in the Imperial City, it has not seemed to me that there
were many trees around the houses, that is, in the gardens and in
the streets. But from here all is submerged in green. Even beyond the
walls whose black outlines may be seen in the distance there are more
woods,--endless woods. Toward the east alone lies the gray desert
which I came through that snowy morning, and toward the north rise the
Mongolian mountains, charming, translucent, and purple against the pale
blue sky.

The great straight arteries of the city, drawn according to a singular
plan, with a regularity and an amplitude to be found in none of the
European capitals, resemble, from the point where I stand, the avenues
in a forest,--avenues bordered by various complicated, delicate
little fretwork houses of gray pasteboard or of gilt paper. Many of
these arteries are dead; in those which are still living, this fact
is indicated from my point of view by the constant moving of little
brown animals along the earth, recalling the migration of ants; these
caravans, which move slowly and quietly away, are scattered to the four
corners of China.

       *       *       *       *       *

A feeling that is akin to regret is mingled with my afternoon's work
in the solitude of my lofty palace,--regret for what is about to end,
for I am now on the eve of departure. And it will be an end without any
possible beginning again, for if I should return to Pekin this palace
would be closed to me, or, in any case, I should never again find here
such charming solitude.

Yet this distant, inaccessible spot, of which it once would have seemed
madness to say that I should ever make it my dwelling-place, has
already become very familiar to me, as well as all that belongs here
and all that has happened here,--the presence of the great alabaster
goddess in the dark temple, the daily visit of the cat, the silence of
the surroundings, the mournful light of the October sun, the agonies
of the last butterflies as they beat against my window-panes, the
manoeuvres of the sparrows whose nests are in the enamelled roofs, the
blowing of the dead leaves, and the fall of the little balsam needles
on the pavement of the esplanade whenever the wind blows. What a
strange destiny, when you think of it, has made me master here for a
few days!

The splendors of our long gallery in the Palace of the North are a
thing of the past. It is already divided by light wooden partitions
which may be removed without difficulty if ever the Empress thinks
of returning, but which, for the time being, cut it up into rooms
and offices. There are still a few magnificent bibelots in the part
which is to be the general's salon, but elsewhere it has all been
simplified; the silks, the pottery, the screens, the bronzes, duly
catalogued, have been removed to a storehouse. Our soldiers have even
found European seats among the palace reserves, which they have taken
to the future apartments of the staff to make them more habitable. They
consist of sofas and arm-chairs, vaguely Henry II. in style, covered
with old-gold plush that reminds one of a provincial hotel.

I expect to leave to-morrow morning. When the dinner hour unites us
once again, Captain C. and I, seated at our little ebony table, both
feel a touch of melancholy at seeing how things have changed about us,
and how quickly our dream of being Chinese sovereigns is over.


  MONDAY, October 29.

I have postponed my departure for twenty-four hours in order to meet
General Vayron, who returns to Pekin this evening, and undertake his
commissions for the admiral. So I have an unexpected half-day to
spend in my high mirador, and hope for a last visit from my cat, who
will find me no more in my accustomed place, neither to-morrow nor
ever again. It is now growing colder each day, so that in any case my
work-room would not be possible much longer.

Before the doors of this palace close behind me forever I want to
take a last walk into all the windings of the terraces, into all
the kiosks, so dainty and so charming, in which the Empress no doubt
concealed her reveries and her amours.

       *       *       *       *       *

As I go to take leave of the great white goddess,--the sun already
setting, and the roofs of the Violet City bathed in the red golds of
evening,--I find the aspect of things about here changed; the soldiers
who were on guard at the gate have climbed to the top and are putting
her house in order; they have carried off the thousand and one boxes of
porcelains and girandoles, the broken vases and the bouquets, and have
carefully swept the place. The alabaster goddess, deliciously pale in
her golden robes, still smiles, more than ever solitary in her empty
temple.

The sun of this last day sets in little wintry clouds that are cold to
look at, and the Mongolian wind makes me shiver in my thick cloak as I
cross the Marble Bridge on my return to the Palace of the North, where
the general with his escort of cavalry has just arrived.


  TUESDAY, October 30.

On horseback, at seven in the morning, a changelessly beautiful sun and
an icy wind. I start off with my two servants, young Toum, and a small
escort of two African chasseurs, who will accompany me as far as my
junk. We have about six kilometres to cover before reaching the dreary
country. We first cross the Marble Bridge, then, leaving the great
Imperial wood, pass through ruined, squalid Pekin in a cloud of dust.

At length, after going through the deep gates in the high outer
ramparts, we reach the outside desert, swept by a terrible wind; and
here the enormous Mongolian camels, with lions' manes, perpetually file
past in a procession, making our horses start with fear.

We reach Tong-Tchow in the afternoon, and silently cross it, ruined
and dead, until we come to the banks of the Pei-Ho. There I find my
junk under the care of a soldier,--the same junk that brought me from
Tien-Tsin with all the necessities for our life on the water intact.
Nothing has been taken during my absence but my stock of pure water,--a
serious loss for us, but a pardonable theft at a time like this, when
the river water is full of danger for our soldiers. As for us, we can
drink hot tea.

We call at the office of the commissary to get our rations and to have
our papers signed; then we pull up our anchor from the infected bank
that breathes of pestilence and death, and begin to float down the
river toward the sea.

Although it is colder than it was coming up, it is almost amusing to
take up a nomadic life again in our little sarcophagus with its matting
roof, and to plunge once more, as night falls, into the immense green
solitude of the dark banks as we glide along between them.


  WEDNESDAY, October 31.

The morning sun shines on the bridge of a junk that is covered with a
thin coating of ice. The thermometer marks 8° above zero, and the wind
blows, cruel and violent, but health-giving, we feel sure.

We have the swift current with us, so that the desolate shores, with
their ruins and their dead, slip by much more rapidly than on our other
journey. We walk on the tow-path from morning until night in order to
keep warm, almost abreast of the Chinese who are pulling the rope.
There is a fulness of physical life in the wind; one feels light and
full of energy.


  THURSDAY, November 1.

Our boat trip lasts only forty-eight hours this time, and we have but
two frosty nights to sleep under a matting roof through which the
shining stars are visible, for toward the end of the second day we
enter Tien-Tsin.

Tien-Tsin, where we have to find a shelter for the night, is horribly
repopulated since our last stay here. It takes us almost two hours to
row across the immense city, working our way amongst myriads of canoes
and junks. Both banks are crowded with Chinese, howling, gesticulating,
buying, and selling, in spite of the fact that few of the walls or
roofs of the houses are left intact.


  FRIDAY, November 2.

In spite of the cold wind and the dust, which continues to blow
pitilessly, we arrive at Taku,--horrible city,--at the mouth of the
river, by mid-day. But alas! it will be impossible to join the squadron
to-day; the tides are unfavorable, the bar in bad condition, the sea
too high. Perhaps to-morrow or the next day.

I had almost had time to forget the difficulties and uncertainties of
life in this place,--the perpetual anxiety in regard to the weather,
the concern for this or that boat laden with soldiers or supplies,
which is running some danger outside or which may founder on the bar;
complications and dangers of all sorts connected with the disembarking
of troops,--a thing which seems so simple when looked at from a
distance, but which is surrounded by a world of difficulties in such
places.


  SATURDAY, November 3.

_En route_ this morning for the squadron out on the open sea. At the
end of a half hour the sinister shore of China disappears behind us,
and the smoke-stacks of the iron-clads begin to pour forth their black
smoke upon the horizon. We fear we shall have to turn back, the weather
is so bad.

Dripping with fog, however, we arrive at last, and I jump aboard the
_Redoutable_, where my comrades, with no taste of high life in China to
break the monotony, have been at work for forty days.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Monsignor Jarlin, the coadjutor of Monsignor Favier.




V

RETURN TO NING-HIA


Six weeks later. A cold and gloomy morning. After having been at
Tien-Tsin, Pekin, and other places, where so many strange and gloomy
things have come to our notice, here we are back again at Ning-Hia,
which we have had time to forget; our boat has gone back to its old
moorings, and we return to the French fort.

It is cold and dull; autumn, which is so severe in these parts, has
brought with it sudden frosts; the birches and willows have lost all
their leaves, and the sky is cold and lowering.

The Zouaves who are living in the fort, and who came so light-heartedly
only a month ago to take the place of our sailors, have already buried
some of their number, who died of typhus or were shot. This very
morning we have paid the last honors to two of them, killed by Russian
balls in a particularly tragic manner, all the result of a mistake.

The sandy roads strewn with yellow leaves are solitary. The Cossacks
have evacuated their camps and disappeared to the other side of the
Great Wall, in the direction of Manchuria. The agitation of the earlier
days is over, as well as the confusion and the joyous crowds; all
have gone into winter quarters in the places assigned to them, and as
the peasants of the vicinity have not returned, their villages are
abandoned and empty.

The fort, though still ornamented with Chinese emblems, now bears
a French name; it is called "Fort Admiral-Pottier." As we entered
trumpets resounded for the admiral, and the Zouaves, ranged under
the guns, looked with respectful sorrow at their chief, who had just
honored with his presence the funeral services of two soldiers.

As soon as we cross the threshold we feel quite unexpectedly as though
we were on French soil; it would be hard to say by what spell these
Zouaves have made of this place and its surroundings in one short
month, something which is like a bit of home.

There have been no great changes; they have been content with
removing Chinese filth, with putting the war supplies in order, with
whitewashing their quarters, and with organizing a bakery where the
bread has a good smell, and a hospital where the many wounded, alas,
and the sick, sleep on very clean little camp beds. All this at once
and quite inexplicably creates a feeling that one is in France again.

In the court of honor in the centre of the fort, in front of the door
leading to the room where the mandarin is enthroned, two gun-carriages
stand, unharnessed. Their wheels are decorated with leaves and they
are covered over with white sheets, upon which are scattered poor
little bouquets fastened on with pins. They are the last flowers from
the neighboring Chinese gardens,--poor chrysanthemums and stunted
roses touched by the frost, all arranged with touching care and kindly
soldierly awkwardness, for the dead comrades who lie there on these
carriages in coffins covered with the French flag.

It is a surprise to find this vast mandarin's room transformed by the
Zouaves into a chapel. A strange chapel truly! On the whitewashed
walls the vests of Chinese soldiers are fastened up and arranged like
trophies with sabres and poniards, while the candlesticks that stand on
the white altar-cloth are made of shell and bayonets,--thus naïvely and
charmingly does the soldier know how to manage when he is in exile.

A military mass begins with trumpet blasts that make the Zouaves fall
upon their knees; mass is said by the chaplain of the squadron, in
mourning dress,--a mass for the dead, for the two who are asleep on
the wagons near the door decorated with late flowers. From the court
Bach's Prelude, played on muffled brass, rises like a prayer, the
dominant note in this mingling of home and foreign land, of funeral
service and gray morning.

Then they depart for a near-by enclosure which we have turned into a
cemetery. Mules are harnessed to the heavy gun-carriages, the admiral
himself leading the procession along the sandy paths where the Zouaves
form a double row, presenting arms.

The sun does not pierce the autumn clouds that lower this morning over
the burial of these children of France. It is cold and gloomy, and the
birches and willows of the desolate country continue to drop their
leaves upon us.

This improvised cemetery, surrounded by so much that is exotic, has
also taken on a French air,--no doubt because of the brave home names
inscribed on wooden crosses that mark the new-made graves; because
of pots of chrysanthemums brought by comrades to these sad mounds of
earth. And yet just beyond the wall which protects our dead, that
other wall which rises and is indefinitely prolonged into the gray
November country, is the Great Wall of China; and we are in exile far,
frightfully far from home.

Now the coffins have been lowered, each one to its hole, adding to
the already long row of new-made graves; all the Zouaves approach in
serried rank while their commandant recalls in a few words how these
two fell.

"It was not far from here. The company was marching without suspicion
in the direction of a fort from which the Russian flag had just been
hoisted, when suddenly balls began to rain like hail. The Russians
behind their ramparts were new-comers who had not seen the Zouaves,
and who mistook their red hats for the caps of the Boxers. Before they
recognized their mistake several of our men lay on the ground; seven,
one of them a captain, were wounded, and these two were dead. One of
them was the sergeant who waved our flag in an effort to stop the
firing."

Then the admiral addresses the Zouaves, whose eyes, all in a row, are
filled with tears; and as he steps forward upon the pile of loose earth
so that he may reach the graves with his sword, and says to those who
lie there, "I salute you as soldiers for the last time," a real sob is
audible, heartfelt, and unrestrained, from the breast of a big hearty
fellow who looks to be not the least brave among those in the ranks.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beside all this, how pitifully, how ironically empty are many of the
pompous ceremonies at official burials with their fine discourses!

In these times of weakness and mediocrity, when nothing is sacred and
the future is full of fear, happy are they who are cut down where
they stand; happy are they who, young and pure, fall for the sake of
adorable dreams of country and of honor, who are borne away wrapped in
the modest flag of their country and greeted as soldiers with simple
words that bring tears to the eyes.




VI

PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME


I

  THURSDAY, April 18, 1901.

The terrible Chinese winter which has pursued us for four months in
this ice-filled gulf of Pekin is over, and here we are again at our
wretched post, having returned with the spring to the thick and yellow
waters at the mouth of the Pei-Ho.

To-day wireless telegraphy, by a series of imperceptible vibrations
gathered at the top of the _Redoutable's_ mast, informs us that the
palace of the Empress, occupied by Field-Marshal von Waldersee, was
burned last night, and that the German chief-of-staff perished in the
flames.

We were the only ones of all the allied squadrons who received this
notice, and the admiral at once ordered me to depart for Pekin to offer
his condolences, and to represent him at the funeral ceremonies.

[Illustration: THE MOUTH OF THE PEI-HO]

There was just twenty-five minutes for my preparations, for the packing
of luggage, great and small; for the boat which must take me ashore
cannot wait without risk of missing the tide, and so being unable to
cross the bar of the river to-night. At the end of an hour my foot is
on the soil of horrible Taku, near the French quarter, where I must
spend the night.


  FRIDAY, April 19.

The railway destroyed by the Boxers has been rebuilt, and the train
which I take this morning goes straight to Pekin, arriving there about
four o'clock this afternoon,--a rapid and commonplace journey, very
different from the one I made at the beginning of winter by junk and on
horseback.

The spring rains have not begun; the chill verdure of May, the sorghos
and the young willows, later than they are in our climate, emerge with
great difficulty from the dry soil and cast a hesitating shadow upon
the Chinese plains, powdered with gray dust and burned by an already
torrid sun.

And how different is the appearance of Pekin! The first time we
approached it, not by the superhuman ramparts of the Tartar City, but
by those of the Chinese City, less imposing and less sombre.

To my surprise the train passes right through a fresh breach in
the wall, enters the heart of the town, and lands one at the door
of the Temple of Heaven. It seems that it is the same with the line
from Pao-Ting-Fou; the Babylonian enclosure has been pierced, and
the railroad enters Pekin and comes to an end only at the imperial
quarters. What unheard-of changes the Celestial Emperor will find if he
ever returns!--locomotives whistling and running right through this old
capital of stability and decay.

On the platform of the temporary station there was an almost joyous
animation, and many Europeans, too, were on hand to meet the incoming
travellers.

Among the numerous officers who were there is one whom I recognize,
although I never have seen him, and toward whom I advance
spontaneously,--Colonel Marchand, the well-known hero, who arrived in
Pekin last November, after I had left. We take a carriage together
bound for the French quarter, where I am to be entertained.

The general quarters are a league away, still in the small Palace of
the North, which was known to me in its Chinese splendor, and of whose
earlier transformations I was a witness. The colonel himself lives near
by in the Rotunda Palace, and we discover in the course of conversation
that he has chosen for his private dwelling the same kiosk which I
used for my work-room last season.

We make the trip by way of the grand avenue used by processions and
emperors, through the triple gates in the colossal red walls under
the murderous dungeon; over the marble bridges between great grinning
marble lions, and between ivory-colored obelisks surmounted by animals
out of dreamland.

And when, after the jolting, the noise, and the crowds, our carriage
glides at last over the large paving-stones of the Yellow City,
all this magnificence seems to me, on second sight, more than ever
condemned,--a thing which has had its day. Imperial Pekin, in its
everlasting dust, is now warmed by the rays of the April sun, yet it
does not waken, does not return to life after its long, cold winter.
Not a drop of rain has fallen yet, the ground is dust, the parks are
dust.

The old cedars, black and powdery, seem like the mummies of trees,
whilst the green of the monotonous willows is just beginning to appear
in the terrible ashen-white sunshine.

The highest roofs rise toward a clear sky which is a mixture of heat
and light,--pyramids of gold-colored faience whose age and dilapidation
are more evident than ever amid the green and the birds'-nests. The
Chinese storks have come back with the spring, and are perched in rows
along the highest parts of the great roofs, on the precious tiles,
among the horns and claws and enamelled monsters; they are small,
motionless white creatures,--half lost in the dazzling whiteness of
the sky,--who seem to be meditating on the destruction of the city as
they contemplate the dismal dwellings at their feet. Really I find that
Pekin has aged since autumn, aged a century or two; the April sunshine
emphasizes all this and classes it definitely among the hopeless
ruins. One feels that its end has come, and that there is no possible
resurrection for it.


  SATURDAY, April 20.

The funeral of General Schwarzhof, one of the greatest enemies of
France, took place at nine o'clock this morning under a torrid sun; he
came to a most unexpected end here in this Chinese palace just as he
seemed about to become quartermaster-general of the German army.

The entire palace was not burned, only that superb part where he and
the marshal lived,--the apartments with the incomparable ebony woodwork
and the throne room filled with _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of ancient art.

The casket has been placed in one of the great rooms left untouched by
the fire. In front of the doorway the white-haired marshal stands in
the dangerous sunshine. Somewhat overcome, but preserving the exquisite
grace of a gentleman and a soldier, he receives the officers who are
presented to him,--officers from all countries in every kind of dress,
who arrive on horseback, on foot, and in carriages, in cocked hats
and in helmets decorated with wings or with feathers. Timid Chinese
dignitaries who seem to belong to another world and another age of
human history come also; and gentlemen high in the diplomatic service
are not lacking, brought here, by some anachronism, in old Asiatic
palanquins.

The Chinese character of the room is entirely concealed by branches
of cypress and cedar, gathered from the imperial park by the German
soldiers and by our own; they cover the walls and ceiling and are
strewn over the floor, exhaling a balsamic odor of the forest around
the casket, which is half hidden by white lilacs from the Empress's
garden.

After the address by a Lutheran pastor, there is a chorus from Händel,
sung from behind the branches by some young German soldiers with voices
so pure and fresh that they are as restful as music from heaven. Tame
pigeons, whose habits have been interfered with by the invasion of
barbarians, fly tranquilly above our plumed and gilded heads.

At the sound of the military brasses the procession begins to move, to
make the tour of the Lake of the Lotus. All along the road a hedge,
such as was never seen before, is formed by the soldiers of all
nations; Bavarians are followed by Cossacks, Italians by Japanese, etc.
Among so many rather sombre uniforms the red waistcoats of the small
English detachment stand out sharply, and their reflections in the lake
are like cruel and bloody trails. It is a very small detachment, almost
ridiculously so beside those that other countries have sent; England
is represented in China chiefly by Indian hordes,--every one knows,
alas, with what a task her troops are elsewhere occupied at the present
moment.

The images of the lines of soldiers are reflected inversely in the
water as well as the great desolate palaces, the marble quays, and the
faience kiosks, built here and there among the trees; in certain places
the lotus, which is beginning to come up from the slimy mud, shows
above the surface its first leaves, of a green tinged with pink.

A stop is made at a dark pagoda, where the coffin is temporarily left.
This pagoda is so surrounded with foliage that it seems at first as
though one were simply entering a garden of cedars, willows, and white
lilacs; but soon the eye distinguishes behind and above this verdure
other rarer and more magnificent foliage, carved by the Chinese for
their gods in the form of clusters of maple or of bamboo, which form
under the ceiling a high arbor of gold.

And here this curious funeral comes to an end. The groups divide,
sorting themselves according to nations, and soon disperse among the
hot wooded walks in the direction of their various palaces.

       *       *       *       *       *

The setting of the Yellow City seems vaster, more extensive than
ever in the April light. One is bewildered by so much artificiality.
How marvellous the genius of these people has been! To have created
bodily, in the midst of an arid plain, a lifeless desert, a city twenty
leagues in circumference, with aqueducts, woods, rivers, mountains,
and lakes! To have created forest distances and watery horizons, to
give their sovereigns illusions of freshness! And to have enclosed
all this,--which in itself is so large that one cannot see its
boundaries,--to have separated it from the rest of the world, to have
sequestered it, if one may use the word, behind such formidable walls!

What their most audacious architects have not been able to create, nor
their proudest emperors, is a real springtime in this parched land,--a
spring like ours, with its warm rains and its tremendously rapid growth
of grass, ferns, and flowers. Here there is no turf, no moss, no
odorous hay; the springtime resurrection is indicated here by the thin
foliage on the willows, by tufts of grass here and there, or by the
blossoming of a sort of purple gillyflower that springs up out of the
dusty soil. It rains only in June, and then there is a deluge flooding
all things.

       *       *       *       *       *

Poor Yellow City, where we walk this morning, meeting so many people,
so many armed detachments, so many uniforms; poor Yellow City, closed
to the world for so many centuries, an inviolable refuge for the rites
and mysteries of the past; city of splendor, oppression, and silence!
When I saw it in the autumn it had an air of desertion which suited it;
but now I find it overrun by the soldiers of all Europe. In all the
palaces and golden pagodas "barbarian" troopers drag their swords or
groom their horses under the very noses of the great dreamy Buddhas.

       *       *       *       *       *

I saw to-day, at a Chinese merchant's, a collection of the ingenious
terra-cotta statuettes, which are a specialty of Tien-Tsin. Up to
the present year, only inhabitants of the Celestial Empire have
been represented,--people of all social conditions and in every
circumstance of life; but these, inspired by the invasion, represent
various Occidental warriors, whose types and costumes are reproduced
with astonishing accuracy. The modellers have given to the soldiers
of certain European countries, which I prefer not to designate, an
expression of fierce rage, and have placed in their hands light swords
or bludgeons, or whips raised as if to strike a blow.

Our own men wear the red cap of the country, and are exceedingly French
as to faces, with moustaches made of yellow or brown silk; each one
carries tenderly in his arms a little Chinese baby. They are posed
in different ways, but all are inspired by the same idea; the little
Chinese is sometimes holding the soldier by the neck and embracing him;
sometimes the soldier is tossing the laughing child, or, again, he is
carefully wrapping it in his winter cloak. Thus it is, in the eyes of
these careful observers, that while others are rough and always ready
to strike a blow, our soldier is the one who after the battle becomes
the big brother of the enemy's little children; after several months
of practically living together, the Chinese have chosen this, and this
alone, to characterize the French.

Examples of these various statuettes ought to be scattered broadcast
throughout Europe: the comparison would be for us a glorious trophy
to bring back from the war, and would close the mouths of numerous
imbeciles in our own country.[2]

       *       *       *       *       *

In the afternoon Marshal von Waldersee came to our headquarters. He
was kind enough to say, what was in fact the truth, that the fire was
extinguished almost entirely by our soldiers, led by my friend Colonel
Marchand.

About eleven o'clock, on the evening of the fire, the colonel was
dreaming on the high terrace of the Rotunda Palace, in a favorable spot
from which to see the great red jet shoot superbly up from the mass of
sculptured ebony and fine lacquer, as well as its reflection in the
water. He was the first to reach the spot with a few of our men, and
he was able to keep ten fire-engines going until morning, while our
marines, under his orders, chopped down some of the blazing parts.
It was owing to him, also, that they were able to recover General
Schwarzhof's body. He constantly directed a stream of water toward the
spot where he knew he had fallen, in default of which incineration
would have been complete.

This evening I go to call on Monsignor Favier, who has just returned
from his trip to Europe, full of confidence in his plans.

How changed is all connected with the Catholic concession since the
autumn! Instead of silence and destruction all is life and activity.
Eight hundred workmen--almost all Boxers, the bishop says with a
defiant smile--are at work repairing the cathedral, which is encased
from top to bottom in bamboo scaffoldings. The avenues about it have
been widened and planted with rows of young acacias, and countless
improvements have been undertaken, as though an era of peace had begun
and persecutions were over forever.

While I am conversing with the bishop in the white parlor, the marshal
arrives. He naturally refers again to the burning of his palace, and
with delicate courtesy informs us that of all the souvenirs which he
lost in the disaster the one he most regrets is the Cross of the Legion
of Honor.


II

  SUNDAY, April 21.

My easy mission over, there is nothing for me to do but to return to
the _Redoutable_.

But the general is kind enough to invite me to remain with him for a
few days. He proposes that we pay a visit to the tombs of the emperors
of the present dynasty, which are in a sacred wood about fifty miles
southwest of Pekin,--tombs which never had been seen before this war,
and which probably never will be seen after it is over. In order
to accomplish this it is necessary to write in advance to warn the
mandarins, and especially the commandants of the French posts stationed
along the route, and there is quite an expedition to organize. So
I asked the admiral for ten days, which he kindly granted me by
telegraph, and am still here, a guest of the palace for much longer
than I expected.

This Sunday morning I go over to Monsignor's cathedral to take part in
the grand mass for the Chinese.

I enter at the left of the nave, which is the side for men, while the
right side is reserved for women.

When I arrive the church is already packed with Chinese, both men and
women, kneeling close together, and humming in an undertone a sort of
uninterrupted chant that resembles the buzzing of an immense hive.
There is a strong smell of musk, for both cotton and silk robes are
saturated with it; and besides that there is the intolerable odor that
belongs to the yellow race, and which is something indescribable. In
front of me, to the farthest ends of the church, men with bowed heads
are kneeling. I see backs by the hundreds with long queues hanging
over them. On the women's side are bright silks,--a perfect medley of
colors; chignons, smooth and black as varnished ebony, with flowers and
gold pins. Everybody sings with mouths almost closed, as if in a dream.
Their devotion is obvious, and it is touching, in spite of the extreme
drollery of the people; they really pray, and seem to do so with fervor
and humility.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now comes the spectacle for which I confess I came,--the coming out
from mass,--a great opportunity to see some of the beautiful ladies of
Pekin, for they do not show themselves in the street, where only women
of the lower classes walk about.

There were several hundred elegant women who slowly came out, one after
another, their feet too small and their shoes too high. Oh, the line
of strange little painted faces and the finery that emerged from that
narrow doorway! The cut of the pantaloons, the cut of the tunics, the
combination of forms and colors, must be as old as China, and how far
it seems from us! They are like dolls of another age, another world,
who have escaped from old parasols or decorated jars, to take on
reality and life this beautiful April morning. Among them are Chinese
ladies with deformed toes and incredibly small, pointed shoes; their
stiff, heavy masses of hair are pointed too, and arranged at the nape
of the neck like birds' tails. There are Tartar ladies, belonging to
the special aristocracy known as "the eight banners;" their feet are
natural, but their embroidered slippers have stilt-like heels; their
hair is long, and is wound like a skein of black silk on a piece of
board placed crosswise back of their heads, so that it forms two
horizontal cones with an artificial flower at each end.

They paint themselves like the wax figures at the
hairdressers',--white, with a bright pink spot in the middle of each
cheek; one feels that it is done according to custom and etiquette,
without the least attempt at creating an illusion.

They chatter and laugh discreetly; they lead by the hand the most
adorable babies (who were as good as little porcelain kittens during
mass), decked out, and their hair dressed in the most comical fashion.
Many of the women are pretty, very pretty; almost all seem decent,
reserved, and _comme il faut_.

The exit from the church was accomplished quietly, with every
appearance of peace and happiness, in complete confidence in these
surroundings so recently the scene of massacre and other horrors.
The gates of the enclosure are wide open, and a new avenue, bordered
by young trees, has been laid out over what was not long since a
charnel-house.

A great number of little Chinese carts, upholstered in beautiful silk
or in blue cotton, are waiting, their heavy wheels decorated with
copper; all the dolls get in with much ceremony, and depart as though
they were leaving some festive performance.

Once more the Christians in China have won a victory, and they triumph
generously--until the next massacre.

       *       *       *       *       *

At two o'clock to-day, as is the Sunday custom, the marine band plays
in the court at headquarters,--in the court of the Palace of the North,
which I had known filled with strange and magnificent débris in a cold
autumn wind, but which at present is all cleared up as neat as a pin,
with the April green beginning to show on the branches of the little
trees.

This semblance of a French Sunday is rather sad. The feeling of exile
which one never loses here is made all the keener by the poor music,
to which there are but few listeners; no dressy women or happy babies,
just two or three groups of idle soldiers and a few of the sick or
wounded from the hospital, their young faces pale and wan, one dragging
a limb, another leaning on a crutch.

And yet there are moments when it does suggest home; the going and
coming of the marines and of the good Sisters reminds one of some
little corner of France; beyond the glass galleries which surround this
court rises the slender Gothic tower of the neighboring church, with
a large tricolored flag floating from the top, high up in the blue
sky, dominating everything, and protecting the little country we have
improvised here in the haunts of the Chinese emperors.

       *       *       *       *       *

What a change has taken place in this Palace of the North since my stay
here last autumn.

With the exception of the part reserved for the general and his
officers, all the galleries and all the dependencies have become
hospital wards for our soldiers. They are admirably adapted to this
purpose, for they are separated from one another by courts, and stand
on high foundations of granite. There are two hundred beds for the poor
sick soldiers, who are most comfortably installed in them, with light
and air at pleasure, thanks to the way this fantastic palace is built.
The good Sisters with their white pointed caps move about with short,
quick steps, distributing medicines, clean linen, and smiles.

A small parlor is set apart for the head-nurse,--an elderly woman,
with a fine, wrinkled face, who has just received the cross, in
the presence of all the troops, for her admirable services during
the siege. Her little whitewashed parlor is altogether typical and
charming, with its six Chinese chairs, its Chinese table, its two
Chinese water-colors of flowers and fruits that hang on the wall,--all
chosen from amongst the most modest of the Sardanapalian reserves of
the Empress; added to these is a large plaster image of the Virgin,
enthroned in the place of honor, between two jars filled with white
lilacs.

White lilacs! The most magnificent bunches of them grow in all the
walled gardens of this palace; they are the sole joyful signs of April,
of real spring under this burning sun; and they are a boon to the
Sisters, who make regular thickets of them in honor of the Virgin and
saints, on their simple altars.

I had known all these mandarins' and gardeners' houses, which extend
on among the trees, in complete disarray, filled with strange spoils,
filth, and pestilential smells; now they are clean and whitewashed,
with nothing disagreeable about them. The nuns have established here a
wash-house, there a kitchen where good broth is made for the invalids,
or a linen room, where piles of clean-smelling sheets and shirts for
the sick are ranged on shelves covered with immaculate papers.

Like the simplest of our sailors or soldiers, I am very much inclined
to be charmed and comforted by the mere sight of a good Sister's cap.
It is no doubt an indication of a regrettable lack in my imagination,
but I have much less of a thrill when I look upon the head-dress of a
lay nurse.

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside of our quarters, in these unheard-of times for Pekin, Sunday
is marked by the great numbers of soldiers of all countries who are
circulating about its streets.

The city has been divided into districts, each placed under the care of
one of the invading peoples, and the different zones mingle very little
with one another; the officers occasionally, the soldiers almost never.
As an exception, the Germans come to us sometimes, and we go to them,
for one of the undeniable results of this war has been to establish
a sympathy between the men of the two armies; but the international
relations of our troops are limited to this one exception.

The part of Pekin that fell to France--several kilometres in
circumference--is the one where the Boxers destroyed most during the
siege, the one that is most ruined and solitary, but also the one to
which life and confidence soonest returned. Our soldiers take kindly
to the Chinese, both men and women, and even to the babies. They have
made friends everywhere, as may be seen by the way the Chinese approach
them instead of running away.

In the French part of Pekin every little house flies the tricolor as a
safeguard. Many of the people have even pasted on their doors placards
of white paper, obtained through the kind offices of some of our men,
on which may be read in big, childish handwriting: "We are Chinese
protected by French" or "Here we are all Chinese Christians."

And every little baby, naked or clothed, with his ribbon and his queue,
has learned, smilingly, to make the military salute as we pass.

       *       *       *       *       *

At sunset the soldiers turn in, the barracks are closed. Silence and
darkness everywhere.

The night is particularly dark. About two o'clock I leave my quarters
with one of my comrades of the land force. Lantern in hand, we set
forth in the dark labyrinth; challenged at first here and there by
sentinels, then, meeting no one but frightened dogs, we cross ruins,
cesspools, and wretched streets that breathe death.

A very dubious-looking house is our goal. The watchmen at the gate, who
were on the lookout, announce us by a long, sinister cry, and we plunge
into a series of winding passageways and dark recesses. Then come
several small rooms with low ceilings, which are stuffy, and lighted
only by dim, smoky lamps; their furnishings consist of a divan and an
arm-chair; the air, which is scarcely breathable, is saturated with
opium and musk. The patron and the patroness have both the _embonpoint_
and the patriarchal good nature which go along with such a house.

I beg that my reader will not misunderstand me; this is a _house of
song_ (one of the oldest of Chinese institutions, now tending to
disappear), and one comes here simply to listen to music, surrounded by
clouds of overpowering smoke.

Hesitatingly we take our places in one of the small rooms, on
a red couch covered with red cushions embroidered with natural
representations of wild animals. Its cleanliness is dubious and the
excessive odors disturb us. On the papered walls hang water-colors
representing beatified sages among the clouds. In one corner an old
German clock, which must have been in Pekin at least a hundred years,
ticks a shrill tick-tock. It seems as though from the moment of our
arrival our minds were affected by the heavy opium dreams that have
been evolved on this divan under the restraint of the oppressive dark
ceilings; and yet this is an elegant resort for the Chinese, a place
apart, to which, before the war, no amount of money would admit any
European.

Pushing aside the long, poisonous pipes that are offered us, we light
some Turkish cigarettes, and the music begins.

The first to appear is a guitarist, and as marvellous a one as could
be found at Granada or Seville. He makes his strings weep songs of
infinite sadness.

Afterwards, for our amusement, he imitates on his guitar the sound of
a French regiment passing, the muffled drums and the trumpets in the
distance playing the "March of the Zouaves."

Finally, three little old women appear, stout and rather pale, who are
to give us some plaintive trios with minor strains that correspond with
the dreams that follow opium smoking. But before beginning, one of the
three, who is the star,--a curious, very much dressed little creature,
with a tiara of rice-paper flowers, like a goddess,--advances toward me
on the toes of her tortured feet, extends her hand to me in European
fashion, and says in French, with a Creole accent, and not without a
certain distinction of manner, "Good evening, colonel."

It was the last thing I expected! Certainly the occupation of Pekin by
French troops has been prolific in unexpected results.


  MONDAY, April 22.

My journey to the Tombs of the Emperors takes some time to organize.
The replies that come to headquarters state that the country has been
less safe for the past few days, that bands of Boxers have appeared
in the province, and they are waiting further instructions before
consenting to my departure.

In the meantime I make another visit in the hot spring sunshine to the
horrors of the Christian cemeteries violated by the Chinese.

The confusion there is unchanged; there is the same chaos of melancholy
marbles, of mutilated emblems, of steles fallen and broken. The human
remains which the Boxers did not have time to destroy before they were
routed lie in the same places; no pious hand has ventured to bury them
again, for, according to Chinese ideas, it would be accepting the
proffered injury to put them back in the ground; they must lie there,
crying for vengeance, until the day of complete reparation. There is
no change in this place of abomination, except that it is no longer
frozen; the sun shines, and here and there yellow dandelions or violet
gillyflowers are blossoming in the sandy soil.

As to the great yawning wells which had been filled with the bodies
of the tortured, time has begun to do its work; the wind has blown
the dust and dirt over them, and their contents have dried to such an
extent that they now form a compact gray mass, although an occasional
foot or hand or skull still protrudes above the rest.

In one of these wells, on the human crust that rises nearly to the top
of the ground, lies the body of a poor Chinese baby, dressed in a torn
little shirt and swathed in red cotton,--it is a recent corpse, hardly
stiff as yet. No doubt it is a little girl, for the Chinese have the
most atrocious scorn for girls; the Sisters pick them up like this
along the roads every day, thrown while still alive upon some rubbish
heap. So it was, no doubt, with this one. She may have been ill, or
ill-favored, or simply one too many in a family. She lies there face
downward, with extended arms and little doll-like hands. Her face,
from which the blood has been running, is lying on the most frightful
rubbish; a few of the feathers of a young sparrow lie on the back of
her neck, over which the flies are meandering.

Poor little creature in her red woollen rags with her little hands
outstretched! Poor little face hidden so that no one shall see it more
before its final decomposition!

FOOTNOTE:

[2] A few days later, by order of the superior officers, those accusing
statues were withdrawn from the market and the models destroyed. Only
the statuettes of the French remained on sale, and they have become
very rare.




VII

THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS


I

  PEKIN, Friday, April 26, 1901.

At last the day has come for my departure for the sacred wood which
encloses the imperial tombs.

At seven o'clock in the morning I leave the Palace of the North, taking
with me my last autumn's servants, Osman and Renaud, as well as four
African riflemen and a Chinese interpreter. We start on horseback on
animals chosen for the journey, which will be transported by rail
whenever we are.

First, two or three kilometres across Pekin in the beautiful morning
light, along great thoroughfares magnificent in their desolation,
the route of pageants and of emperors; through the triple red gates,
between lions of marble and obelisks of marble, yellow as old ivory.

Now the railway station--it is in the centre of the city at the foot
of the wall of the second enclosure, for the Western barbarians dared
to commit the sacrilege of piercing the ramparts in order to introduce
their submersive system.

Men and horses go aboard. Then the train threads its way across the
devastated Chinese City, and for three or four kilometres skirts the
colossal gray wall of the Tartar City, which continues to unfold
itself, always the same, with the same bastions, the same battlements,
without a gate, without anything, to relieve its monotony and its
immensity.

A breach in the outer wall casts us forth at last into the melancholy
country.

And for three hours and a half it is a journey through the dust of
the plain, past demolished stations, rubbish, ruins. According to the
great plans of the allied nations, this line, which actually goes to
Pao-Ting-Fu, is to be extended several hundred leagues, so as to unite
Pekin and Hang-Chow, two enormous cities. It would thus become one of
the great arteries of new China, scattering along its way the benefits
of Occidental civilization.

At noon we alight at Tchou-Tchou, a great walled city, whose high
battlemented ramparts and two twelve-storied towers are perceived as
through a cloud of ashes. A man is scarcely recognizable at twenty
paces, as in times of fog in the north, so filled with dust is the
air; and the sun, though dimmed and yellow, reflects a heat that is
overpowering.

The commandant and the officers of the French port, which has occupied
Tchou-Tchou since the autumn, were kind enough to meet me and to take
me for breakfast to their table in the comparative freshness of the big
dark pagodas where they with their men were installed. The road to the
tombs,[3] they tell me, which latterly has seemed quite safe, has been
less so for a few days, a band of two hundred marauding Boxers having
yesterday attacked one of the large villages through which I must pass,
where they fought all the morning,--until the appearance of a French
detachment who came to the aid of the villagers sent the Boxers flying
like a flock of sparrows.

"Two hundred Boxers," continued the commandant of the post, making a
mental calculation; "let me see, two hundred Boxers: you will have to
have at least ten men. You already have six horsemen; I will, if you
wish, add four more."

I felt that I ought to make some suitable acknowledgment, to reply that
it was too much, that he overpowered me. Then under the eyes of the
Buddhas, who were watching us breakfast, we both began to laugh, struck
all at once by the air of extravagant bluster in what we were saying.
In truth it had the force of

  "Paraissez, Navarrois, Maures et Castillans;"

and yet, ten men against two hundred Boxers are really all that are
necessary. They are tenacious and terrible only behind walls, those
fellows; but in a flat country--it is highly probable, moreover, that I
shall not see the queue of one. I accept the reinforcement,--four brave
soldiers, who will be delighted to accompany me; I accept so much the
more readily, since my expedition will thus take on the proportions of
a military reconnaissance, and this, it appears, will be a good thing
just now.

At two o'clock we remount our horses, for we are to sleep in an old
walled town twenty-five kilometres farther on, called Laï-Chow-Chien
(Chinese cities seem to claim these names; we know of one called
Cha-Ma-Miaou, and another, a very large, ancient capital, Chien-Chien).

We make a plunge and disappear at once in a cloud of dust which the
wind chases over the plain,--the immense, suffocating plain. There is
no illusion possible; it is the "yellow wind" which has arisen,--a wind
which generally blows in periods of three days, adding to the dust of
China all that of the Mongolian desert.

No roads but deep tracks, paths several feet below the surface, which
could only have been hollowed there in the course of centuries. A
frightful country, which has, since the beginning of time, endured
torrid heat and almost hyperborean cold. In this dry, powdery soil how
can the new wheat grow, which here and there makes squares of really
fresh green in the midst of the infinite grays? There are also from
time to time a few sparse clumps of young elms and willows, somewhat
different from ours, but nevertheless recognizable, just showing their
first tiny leaves. Monotony and sadness; one would call it a poor
landscape of the extreme north, lighted by an African sun,--a sun that
has mistaken the latitude.

At a turn of the crooked road a band of laborers who see us suddenly
spring up, are frightened, and throw down their spades to run away. But
one of them stops the others, crying, "Fanko pink" (French soldiers).
"They are French, do not be afraid." Then they bend again over the
burning earth, and peaceably continue their work, looking at us as we
pass by from the corners of their eyes. Their confidence speaks volumes
on the somewhat exceptional kind of "barbarians" our brave soldiers
have known how to be, in the course of a European invasion.

[Illustration: CHINESE VILLAGE CARTS, THE ONLY VEHICLE USED IN THE
NORTH OF CHINA]

The few clumps of willows scattered over the plains almost always
shelter under their sparse foliage the villages of tillers of the
soil,--little houses of clay and of gray brick, absurd little
pagodas, which are crumbling in the sunshine. Warned by watchmen,
men and children come out as we pass to look at us in silence with
naïve curiosity; bare to the waist, very yellow, very thin, and very
muscular; pantaloons of the ever similar dark blue cotton. Out of
politeness each one uncoils and allows to hang down his back his long
plaited hair, for to keep it on the crown of the head would be a
disrespect to me. No women; they remain concealed. These people must
have much the same impression of us that the peasants of Gaul had when
Attila, chief of the army, passed with his escort, except that they are
less frightened. Everything about us is astonishing,--costumes, arms,
and faces. Even my horse, which is an Arabian stallion, must seem to
them a huge, unusual, superb animal beside their own little horses,
with their big rough heads.

The frail willows, through which the sunlight sifts upon the houses and
tiny pagodas of these primitive lives, scatter over us their blossoms,
like tiny feathers or little tufts of cotton-wool, which fall in a
shower, and mingle with the never-ending dust.

On the plain, which now begins again, level and always the same, I keep
two or three hundred metres in advance of my little armed troop, to
avoid the excessive dust raised by the trot of the horses' feet; a gray
cloud behind me when I turn around shows me that they are following.
The "yellow wind" continues to blow; we are powdered with it to such an
extent that our horses, our moustaches, our uniforms have become of the
color of ashes.

Toward five o'clock the old walled town where we are to pass the night
appears before us. From afar it is almost imposing in the midst of the
plain, with its high crenellated ramparts so sombre in color. Near by,
no doubt, it would show but ruin and decrepitude, like the rest of
China.

A horseman, bringing along with him the inevitable cloud of dust,
comes out to meet me. It is the officer commanding the fifty men of
the marine infantry who have occupied Laï-Chou-Chien since October. He
informs me that the general has had the kindly thought of having me
announced as one of the great mandarins of Occidental letters, so the
mandarin of the town is coming out to meet me with an escort, and he
has called together the neighboring villages for a fête which he is
preparing for me.

In fact, here the procession comes, from out the crumbling old gates,
advancing through the wasted fields, with red emblems and music.

Now it stops to await me, ranged in two lines on each side of the
road. And following the usual ceremonial, some one, a servant of the
mandarin, comes forward, fifty feet in advance of the others, with a
large red paper, which is the visiting-card of his master. He himself,
the timid mandarin, awaits, standing, with the people of his house,
having come down from his palanquin out of deference. I extend my hand
without dismounting, as I have been told to do, after which, in a cloud
of gray dust, we make our way toward the great walls, followed by my
cavaliers, and preceded by the procession of honor with music and
emblems.

At the head are two big red parasols, surrounded with a fall of silk
like the canopies in a procession; than a fantastic black butterfly,
as large as an owl with extended wings, which is carried at the end
of a stick by a child; then two rows of banners; then shields of red
lacquered wood inscribed with letters of gold. As soon as we begin to
march gongs commence to sound lugubriously at regular intervals as for
a military salute, whilst heralds with prolonged cries announce my
arrival to the inhabitants of the village.

Here we are at the gate, which seems like the entrance to a cavern; on
each side are hung five or six little wooden cages, each one containing
a kind of black beast, motionless in the midst of a swarm of flies;
their tails may be seen hanging outside the bars like dead things. What
can it be that keeps itself rolled up like a ball, and has such a long
tail? Monkeys? Ah, horrors, they are heads that have been severed from
their bodies! Each one of these pretty cages contains a human head,
beginning to grow black in the sunshine, with long, braided hair which
has been intentionally uncoiled.

We are swallowed up by the big gate, and are received by the inevitable
grinning old granite monsters which at right and at left raise their
great heads with the squinting eyes. Motionless, against the inner
wall of the tunnel, the people press to see me pass, huddled together,
climbing one upon the other,--yellow nakedness, blue cotton rags, ugly
faces. The dust fills and obscures this vaulted passage where men and
horses press, enveloped in the same gloom.

We have entered old provincial China, belonging to another era entirely
unknown to us.

[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_
NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS AND MEN OF FRENCH ARTILLERY AND MARINES]


II

Ruin and dilapidation within the walls, as I expected, not from any
fault of the Boxers or of the Allies, for the war did not come near
here, but as a result of decay, of the falling into dust of this old
China, our elder by more than thirty centuries.

The gong in front of me continues to sound lugubriously at fixed
intervals, and the heralds continue to announce me to the people by
prolonged cries, resounding through the little powdery streets under
the still burning evening sun. One sees unused land and cultivated
fields. Here and there granite monsters, defaced, shapeless, half
buried, worn by years, indicate what was formerly the entrance to a
palace.

Before a door which surmounts a tricolored pavilion the procession
stops, and I dismount. For seven or eight months our fifty soldiers of
the marine infantry have been quartered here, spending a whole long
winter at Laï-Chou-Chien, separated from the rest of the world by snow
and icy steppes, and leading a Crusoe-like existence in the midst of
the most perplexing surroundings.

It is a surprise and a joy to come among them, to see again their
honest home faces, after all the yellow ones we have met along the
road, darting sharp enigmatical glances at us. This French quarter is
like a bit of life, gaiety, and youth in the midst of mummified old
China.

It is plain that the winter has been good for our soldiers, for the
look of health is on their cheeks. They have organized themselves with
a comical and somewhat marvellous ingenuity, creating lavatories,
douche rooms, a schoolroom where they teach French to the little
Chinese, and even a theatre. Living in intimate comradeship with the
people of the town, who will before long be unwilling to see them go,
they cultivate vegetable gardens, raise chickens and sheep, and bring
up little ravens by hand like orphan babies.

It is arranged that I should sleep at the house of the mandarin after
having supped at the French post. So at nine o'clock they come for me
to conduct me to the "Yamen" with lanterns of state, decorated in a
very Chinese fashion and as big as barrels.

The Chinese Yamen is always of tremendous extent. In the cool night
air, picking my way by the light of lanterns, amongst huge stones and
between rows of servants, I pass through a series of courts two hundred
metres long, with I don't know how many ruined porticoes and peristyles
with shaky steps, before reaching the crumbling and dusty lodging
which the mandarin intends for me,--a separate building in the midst
of a sort of yard, and surrounded by old trees with shapeless trunks.
There, under the smoky rafters, I have a great room, with whitewashed
walls, containing in the centre a platform with seats like a throne,
also some heavy ebony arm-chairs; and as wall decorations some rolls of
silk spread out, on which poetry, in Manchou characters, is written. In
the wing on the left is a small bedroom for my two servants, and on the
right one for me with window-panes of rice paper. On a platform is a
very hard bed with covers of red silk, and, lastly, an incense burner,
in which little sticks of incense are burning. All this is rural,
naïve, and superannuated, antiquated even for China.

My timid host, in ceremonial costume, awaits me at the entrance, and
makes me take a seat with him on the central throne, where he offers me
the obligatory tea in porcelain a hundred years old. Then he had the
discretion to bring the audience to a close and to bid me good-night.
As he withdrew he told me not to be disturbed if I heard a good deal
of coming and going over my head, as the space above was frequented by
rats. Neither was I to be disturbed if I heard on the other side of
my paper window-panes people walking up and down in the yard playing
castanets; they would be the night watchmen, thus informing me that
they were not asleep, and were doing their duty.

"There are many brigands in this country," he added; "the city with
its high walls closes its gates at sunset, but the workmen going to
the fields before daybreak have made a hole in the ramparts,--this the
brigands have discovered, and do not hesitate to enter by it."

When this deep-bowing mandarin was gone, and I was alone in the
darkness of my dwelling, in the heart of an isolated city whose gates
were guarded by human heads in cages, I felt myself at an infinite
distance away, separated from my own world by immense space as well as
by time, by ages; it seemed to me that I was going to sleep amongst a
people at least a thousand years behind our era.


  SATURDAY, April 27.

The crowing of cocks, the singing of little birds on my roof, awoke me
in my strange old room; and by the light that came in through my paper
panes I guessed that the warm sun was shining out of doors.

Osman and Renaud, who were up before me, came to tell me that they were
hurriedly making great preparations in the courtyard of the Yamen in
order to give me a fête, a morning fête, because we had to continue
our route to the imperial tombs soon after the mid-day meal.

It began about nine o'clock. I was given a seat in an arm-chair beside
the mandarin, who seemed weighed down beneath his silken gowns. In
front of me, in the dazzling sunshine, was the series of courts with
porticoes of irregular outline and old monsters on pedestals. A crowd
of Chinese--always the men alone, it is understood--have assembled in
their eternal blue rags. The yellow wind which had died down at night,
as usual, begins to blow again, and to whiten the heavens with dust.
The acacias and the monotonous willows, which are almost the only
trees scattered over this northern China, show here and there on their
slender old branches little pale-green leaves just barely out.

First comes the slow, the very slow, passing of a band with many gongs,
cymbals, and bells all muffled; the melody seems to be carried by a
sweet, melancholy, and persistent unison of flutes,--large flutes, with
a deep tone, some of which have several tubes, and resemble sheaves of
wheat. It is sweet and lulling, exquisite to hear.

Now the musicians seat themselves near us, in a circle, to open the
fête. All at once the rhythm changes, grows more rapid, and becomes a
dance. Then from afar, from the retirement of the courts and the old
porticoes, one sees above the heads of the crowd, through the dust
that grows thicker and thicker, a troop of dancing creatures two or
three times taller than men, swinging along, swinging in regular time
and playing citherns, fanning themselves, and comporting themselves
generally in an exaggerated, nervous epileptic manner.--Giants?
Jumping Jacks? What can they be? They are approaching rapidly with
long, leaping steps, and here they are in front of us. Ah, they are on
stilts, enormously high stilts. They are taller on their wooden legs
than the shepherds of the Landes, and they hop like big grasshoppers.
They are in costume and made up,--painted, rouged. They have wigs,
false beards; they represent gods, genii such as one sees on old
pagodas; they represent princesses also, with beautiful robes of
embroidered silk, with cheeks too pink and white, and with artificial
flowers in their chignons,--princesses all very tall, fanning
themselves in an exaggerated way, and swinging along like the rest of
the company, with the same regular, continuous movement, as persistent
as the pendulum of a clock.

All these stilt-walkers, it seems, are merely young men of a
neighboring village, who have formed themselves into a gymnastic
society, and who do this for amusement. In the smallest villages in
the interior of China, centuries, yes, thousands of years, before
the custom reached us, the men--fathers and sons--began to devote
themselves passionately to feats of strength and skill, founding rival
societies, some becoming acrobats, others balancers, or jugglers, and
organizing contests. It is especially during the long winters that they
exercise, when all is frozen, and when each little human group must
live alone in the midst of a desert of snow.

In fact, in spite of their white wigs and their centenarian beards, it
is obvious that all these people are young, very young, with childlike
smiles. They smile naïvely, these droll, pleasant princesses with
the over-long legs, whose fan motions are so excited and who dance
more and more disjointedly, bending, reversing, and shaking their
heads and their bodies in a frenzy. They smile naïvely, these old men
with children's faces; they play the cithern or the tambourine as
though they were possessed. The persistent unison of the flutes seems
to bewitch them, to put them into a special condition of madness,
expressed by more and more convulsive movements.

At a given signal each one stands on a single stilt, the other leg
raised, the second stilt thrown back over the shoulder; and by
prodigies of balancing they dance harder than ever, like marionettes
whose springs are out of order, whose mechanism is about to break down.
Then bars two metres high are brought in, and they jump over them,
every one taking part, including the princesses, the old men, and
the genii, all keeping up an incessant play of fans and a beating of
tambourines.

At last, when they can hold out no longer and go and lean against the
porticoes among the old acacias and willows, another company just
like the first comes forward and begins again, to the same tune, a
similar dance. They represent the same persons, the same genii, the
same long-bearded gods, the same beautiful mincing dames. In their
accoutrements, so unknown to us, and with their curiously wrinkled
faces, these dancers are the incarnation of ancient mythological dreams
dreamed long ago in the dark ages by human beings at an infinite
distance from us; and these customs are handed down from generation
to generation, and from one end of the country to the other in that
unchanging way in which rites, forms, and property in China are
invariably transmitted.

This fête, this dance, extremely novel as it is, retains its village,
its rustic character, and is as simple as any truly rural entertainment.

They finally cease jumping the bars, and now two terrible beasts come
forth, one red and one green. They are big, heraldic dragons at least
twenty metres long, with the raised heads, the yawning mouths, the
horns, and claws, and horrible squinting eyes that everybody knows.
They advance rapidly, throwing themselves onto the shoulders of the
crowd with the undulations of a reptile; they are light, however,
made of pasteboard, covered with some sort of stuff, and each beast
is supported in the air by means of sticks, by a dozen skilful young
men who have a subtle knack of giving to their movements a serpentine
effect. A sort of master of the ballet precedes them, holding in his
hand a ball which they never lose sight of, and which he uses as the
leader of an orchestra uses his baton, to guide the writhings of the
monsters.

The two great creatures content themselves with dancing before me, to
the sound of flutes and gongs, in the centre of the circle of Chinese,
which is extended in order to make room for them. At length the
struggle becomes quite terrible, while the gongs and cymbals rage. They
become entangled, they roll on top of one another, they drag their long
rings in the dust, and then, all at once, with a bound they get up,
as though in a passion, and stand shaking their enormous heads at one
another, trembling with rage. The ballet master, nervously moving his
director's ball, throws himself about and rolls his ferocious eyes.

The dust on the crowd grows thicker and thicker, and on the invisible
dragon-bearers; it rises in clouds, rendering this battle between the
red beast and the green beast almost fantastic. The sun burns as in a
tropical country, and yet the sad Chinese April, anæmic from such a
drought following the frozen winter, is barely heralded by the tender
color of the few tiny leaves on the old willows and acacias of the
court.

After breakfast some of the mandarins of the plain from the
neighboring villages arrive, preceded by music and bringing me
pastoral offerings,--baskets of preserved grapes, baskets of pears,
live chickens in cages, and a jar of rice-wine. They wear the official
winter head-dress, with a raven's quill, and have on gowns of dark silk
with squares of gold embroidery, in the centre of which is depicted,
surrounded by clouds, the invariable stork flying toward the moon.
They are nearly all dried-up old men with gray beards and drooping
gray moustaches. We have great _tchinchins_ with them, profound bows,
extravagant compliments, handshakings in which one feels the scratch of
over-long nails, the touch of thin old fingers.

At two o'clock I remount with my men and start off through the
dilapidated streets, preceded by the same procession as upon my
arrival. The gongs are muffled, the heralds sound their cries. Behind
me my host, the mandarin, follows in his palanquin, accompanied by the
troop on stilts and by the enormous dragons.

As we leave the village, and enter the deep tunnelled gateway where
the crowd is already assembled to see us, the whole procession is
engulfed with us,--the long, striding princesses, the gods who play the
cithern or the tambourine, the red beast, and the green beast. In the
semi-obscurity of the arched way, to the noise of all the citherns and
of all the gongs, in the clouds of black dust which blind us, there is
a compact _mêlée_, where our horses prance and jump, troubled by the
noise and terrified by the two frightful monsters undulating above our
heads.

After conducting us a quarter of a league beyond the walls, the
procession leaves us at last, and we find silence again on the burning
plain, where we have about twenty kilometres to go through the dust
and the "yellow wind" before reaching Y-Tchou, another old walled city
which is to be our halting-place for the night.

Not until to-morrow do we arrive at the tombs.


III

The plain resembles that of yesterday, yet it is a little more green
and wooded. The wheat, sown in rows, as with us, grows miraculously
in this soil, made up of dust and cinders though it apparently is.
Everything seems less desolate as one gets farther away from the
region of Pekin, and ascends almost imperceptibly towards those great
mountains of the west, which are appearing with greater and greater
distinctness in front of us. The "yellow wind," too, blows with less
severity, and when it dies down for a few moments, when the blinding
dust decreases, it is like the country in the north of France, with its
ploughed fields and clumps of elms and willows. One forgets that this
is the heart of China, on the other side of the globe, and one expects
to see peasants from home pass along the paths. But the few toilers who
are bending over the earth have long braids, coiled about their heads
like crowns, and their bare backs are saffron-colored.

[Illustration: CHINESE PEASANT CULTIVATING RICE FIELDS WITH NATIVE
PLOW]

All is peace in these sunshine-flooded fields, in these villages built
in the scanty shade of the willows. The people seem to live happily,
cultivating the friendly soil in primitive fashion, guided by the
customs of five thousand years ago. Aside from the possible exactions
of a few mandarins,--and there are many who are kind,--these Chinese
peasants still live in the Golden Age, and I can hardly conceive of
their accepting the joys of the "New China" dreamed of by Occidental
reformers. Up to this time, it is true, the invasion has scarcely
reached them; in this part of the country, occupied solely by the
French, our troops have never played any other rôle than that of
defender of the villagers against pillaging Boxers. Ploughing, sowing,
all the work of the fields, has been quietly done in season, and it is
impossible not to be struck with the very different look of other parts
of the country which I will not designate, where there has been a reign
of terror, and where the fields have been destroyed and have become
desert steppes.

       *       *       *       *       *

At about half-past four, against a background of mountains which are
beginning to look tall to us, a village appears, the first sight of
which, like that of yesterday, is rather formidable with its high
crenellated ramparts.

A horseman comes out to meet me once more, like yesterday, and again
it is the captain in command of the post of marine infantry stationed
there since last autumn.

Watchers stationed on the walls have perceived us from afar by the
cloud of dust our horses raise on the plain. As soon as we approach
we see emerging from the old gates the official procession coming to
meet us, with the same emblems as at Laï-Chou-Chien,--the same big
butterfly, the same red parasols, the same shields and banners. Each
Chinese ceremonial has been for centuries regulated by unvarying usages.

However, the people who receive me to-day are much more elegant and
undoubtedly richer than those of yesterday. The mandarin, who comes
down from his sedan chair to await me at the side of the road, having
sent his red paper visiting-card on before him a hundred feet or so,
stands surrounded by a group of important-looking persons in sumptuous
silk robes. He himself is a distinguished-looking old man, who wears
in his hat the peacock feather and the sapphire button. There is an
enormous crowd waiting to see me make my entrance to the funereal sound
of the gongs and the prolonged cries of the heralds. On the top of the
ramparts figures may be seen peering through the battlements with their
small oblique eyes, and even in the dim gateways double rows of yellow
men crowd against the walls. My interpreter confesses, however, that
there is a general disappointment. "If he is a man of letters," they
ask, "why is he dressed like a colonel?" (The scorn of the Chinese for
the military profession is well known.) My horse, however, somewhat
restores my prestige. Tired as the poor Algerian animal is, he still
has a certain carriage of the head and tail when he feels that he is
observed, and especially if he hears the sound of the gong.

Y-Tchou, the city wherein we find ourselves, shut in by walls thirty
feet high, still contains fifteen thousand inhabitants in spite of
its deserted districts and its ruins. There is a great crowd along
our route, in all the little streets and in front of the little old
shops where antediluvian occupations are carried on. It was from this
very place that the terrible movement of hatred against foreigners
was launched last year. In a convent of Bonze nuns in the neighboring
mountain the war of extermination was first preached, and these people
who receive me so kindly were the first Boxers. Ardent converts for
the moment to the French cause, they cheerfully decapitate those of
their own people who refuse to come to terms, and put their heads in
the little cages which adorn the gates of their city; but if the wind
should change to-morrow, I should see myself cut up by them to the
tune of the same old gongs and with the same enthusiasm which they
put into my reception. When I have taken possession of the house set
apart for me, back of the residence of the mandarin at the end of an
interminable avenue of old porticoes, and monsters who show me their
teeth in tiger-like smiles, a half-hour of daylight still remains, and
I go to pay a visit to a young prince of the imperial family, stationed
at Y-Tchou in the interests of the venerable tombs.

First comes his garden, melancholy in the April twilight. It lies
between walls of gray brick, and is very much shut in for a town
already so walled. Gray also is the rockwork outlining the small
squares or lozenges, where big red, lavender, and pink peonies
flourish. These, unlike our own, are very fragrant, and to-night fill
the air of this gloomy enclosure with an excessive odor. There are
also rows of little porcelain jars inhabited by tiny fish--regular
monstrosities--red fish or black fish with cumbersome fins and
extravagant tails, giving the effect of a flounced petticoat; fish with
enormous terrifying eyes, which protrude like those of the heraldic
dragons and which are the result of I do not know what mysterious form
of breeding. The Chinese, who torture the feet of their women, also
deform their trees, so that they remain dwarfed and crooked. They train
their fruits to resemble animals, and their animals to look like the
chimæras of a dream.

It is already dark in the prince's apartment, which looks out on this
prison-like garden, and one sees little, on first entering, but
draperies of red silk, long canopies falling from numerous "parasols of
honor," which are open and standing upright on wooden supports. The air
is heavy, saturated with opium and musk. There are deep red divans with
silver pipes lying about for smoking the poison of which China is in a
fair way to perish. The prince, who is twenty or twenty-two years old,
is of a sickly ugliness, with divergent eyes; he is perfumed to excess,
and dressed in pale silk in tones of mauve or lilac.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the evening dinner with the mandarin, where the commandant of
the French post, the prince, two or three notables, and one of my
"confrères," a member of the Academy of China,--a mandarin with a
sapphire button,--are the guests. Seated in heavy square arm-chairs,
there are six or seven of us around a table decorated with small,
exquisite, and unusual bits of old porcelain, so tiny as to seem to be
part of a doll service. Red candles in high copper chandeliers give us
our light.

This very morning the entire province had orders to leave off the
winter head-dress and to put on the summer one,--a conical affair,
resembling a lamp-shade, from which fall tufts of reddish horse-hair or
peacock's or crow's feathers, according to the rank of the wearer. And
since it is the style to wear them at dinner, hats of this description
make grotesque figures of the guests.

As for the ladies of the house, they, alas, remain invisible, and it
would be the worst possible breach of good form to ask for them or to
refer to them in any way. It is well known that a Chinaman compelled to
speak of his wife must refer to her in an indirect way, using, whenever
possible, a qualifying term, devoid of all compliment, as, for example,
"my offensive" or "my nauseating" wife.

The dinner begins with preserved prunellas and a great variety of
dainty sweetmeats, which are eaten with little chop-sticks. The
mandarin makes excuses for not offering me sea-swallows' nests, but
Y-Tchou is so far from the coast that it is difficult to secure what
one would like. But to make up for this lack, there is a dish of
sharks' fins, another of the bladder of the sperm whale, another still
of hinds' nerves, besides a ragout of water-lily roots with shrimps'
eggs.

The inevitable odor of opium and musk mingled with the flavor of
strange sauces pervades the room, which is white with a black ceiling.
Its walls are decorated with water-colors on long strips of precious
yellow paper, containing representations of animals or of huge flowers.
A score of servants flock about us with the same sort of head-dress as
their masters, and clad in beautiful silk gowns with velvet corselets.
At my right my "confrère" of the Chinese Academy discourses to me of
another world. He is old and quite withered-looking from the abuse
of the fatal drug; his small face, shrivelled to a mere nothing, is
obliterated by his conical hat and by his big blue goggles.

"Is it true," he inquires, "that the Middle Empire occupies the top
of the territorial globe, and that Europe hangs on one side at an
uncomfortable angle?"

It appears that he has at the ends of his fingers more than forty
thousand characters in writing, and that he is able to improvise sweet
poetry on any subject you may choose. From time to time I am aghast at
the sight of his skeleton-like arm emerging from sleeves like pagodas,
and stretching out toward some dish. His object is to secure with his
own two-tined fork some choice morsel for me, which compels me to
resort to perpetual and difficult jugglery in order not to have to eat
the things.

After several preposterous light dishes, boned ducks appear, then a
copious variety of viands succeed one another until the guests announce
that they really have had enough. Then they bring opium pipes and
cigarettes, and soon it is time to take a palanquin for the nocturnal
festival they are arranging for me.

Outside, in the long avenue of porticoes, under the starry sky, all the
servants of the Yamen await us with big paper lanterns, painted with
bats and chimæras. A hundred friendly Boxers are also there, holding
torches to light us better. Each of us gets into a palanquin, and the
bearers trot off with us, while flaming torches run along beside us,
and gongs, also running, begin the noise of battle at the head of our
procession.

By the light of dancing torches we file rapidly past the open stalls,
past the groups of natives assembled to watch us, past the grimacing
monsters ranged along our route.

At the rear of an immense court stands a new building, where by the
light of the torches we read the astonishing inscription, "Parisiana
of Y-Tchou." "Parisiana" in this ultra-Chinese town, which until the
previous autumn had never seen a European approach its walls! Our
bearers stop there, and we find it is a theatre improvised this winter
by our sixty soldiers to help pass away the glacial evenings.

I had promised to assist at a gala performance given for me by these
grown-up children this evening. And of all the charming receptions that
have been tendered me here and there all over the world, none has
moved me more than this one arranged by a few soldiers exiled in a lost
corner of China. Their reserved smiles of welcome, the few words one of
them undertook to say for all, were more touching than any banquet or
formal address, and I was glad to press the hands of the brave soldiers
who dared not offer them.

In order that I might have a souvenir of their evening's hospitality at
Y-Tchou, they got up a subscription and presented me with a very local
gift,--one of those red silk parasols with long falling draperies,
which it is the custom in China to carry in front of men of mark. And
cumbrous as the thing is, even when folded, it is needless to say that
I shall take it with great care to France.

They next gave me an illustrated programme, on which the name of each
actor figured, followed by a pompous title,--"Monsieur the soldier
so-and-so of the Comédie-Française," or "Monsieur the corporal
so-and-so of the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt." We take our places. It is a
real theatre that they have made, with a raised stage, scenery, and a
curtain.

In the Chinese arm-chairs, which are placed in the first row, their
captain is seated next to me; then come the mandarin, the prince of
the blood, and two or three other notables, with long queues. Behind
us are the under-officers and the soldiers; several yellow babies in
ceremonial toilettes mingle familiarly with them, even climbing up on
their knees. They are pupils from their school. For they have started a
school, like the one at Laï-Chou-Chien, to teach French to the children
of the neighborhood. A sergeant presented me to an inimitable youngster
of not more than six, dressed for the occasion in a beautiful gown, his
little short, thick queue tied with red silk, who recited for me the
beginning of "Maître corbeau sur un arbre perché," in a deep voice,
rolling his eyes to the ceiling the while.

Three taps and the curtain rises. First comes a farce, by I know not
whom, but certainly much retouched by themselves with an unexpected
turn of wit which is irresistible. The ladies, the mothers-in-law, with
false hair made of oakum, are indescribable. Then more comic scenes and
songs from the "Black Cat." The Chinese guests on their throne-like
chairs remain as impassive as the Buddhas of the pagodas. What do their
Asiatic brains make of all this French gaiety?

Before the last numbers on the programme are over the sudden thundering
of gongs is heard outside, the playing of citherns, and the clashing
of cymbals, and of all the rest of the iron instruments of China. It
is the prelude to the fête which the mandarin is to give me, which is
to take place in the courtyard of the army quarters, and in which our
soldiers naturally are to take part.

A profusion of lanterns illumines the court, together with the flaming
torches of a hundred Boxers. First there is a stilt dance, then
follow all the gymnastic societies of the adjoining district in their
specialties. Little country boys twelve years old, costumed like lords
of old dynasties, have a sham battle, flourishing their swords and
jumping about like kittens, prodigies of quickness and lightness. Then
come the young men of another village, who throw off their garments and
begin to twirl pitchforks all around their naked bodies; by a twist of
the wrist or by an imperceptible movement of the foot they are turned
so rapidly that very soon they are no longer forks to our eyes, but a
row of endless serpents about the breasts of the men. Then suddenly,
more deftly than in the best managed circus, a horizontal bar is placed
before us, and acrobats, naked to the waist, and superbly muscular,
give a performance. They belong to the mandarin, and are the very men
who just now served us at the table in beautiful silken robes.

It all ended with very long and noisy fireworks. When the pieces
attached to invisible bamboo stems exploded in the air, delicate and
luminous paper pagodas floated off across the starry sky, fabrics of a
Chinese dream, trembling, imponderable, which suddenly took fire and
disappeared in smoke.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is late when we return through the little dark streets, now all
asleep. Our bearers trot along, escorted by a thousand dancing lights
from torches and lanterns.

Toward midnight I am at last alone, in the depths of the Yamen, in my
separate dwelling, the avenue leading to it guarded by motionless,
crouching beasts. On my centre-table they have placed a luncheon of
all the kinds of cakes known to China. Trees in fruit, in flower, and
without leaves, decorate my small tables,--dwarf trees, of course,
grown in porcelain jars, and so tortured as to become unnatural. A
little pear-tree has assumed the regular form of a lyre composed of
white blossoms; a small peach-tree resembles a crown made of pink
flowers. Everything in my room, except these fresh spring plants, is
old, warped, worm-eaten, and at the holes in a ceiling that was once
white appear the faces of innumerable rats, whose eyes follow me about
the room. As soon as I put out my light and lie down in my great bed
with carvings representing horrible animals, I hear all these rats
come down, move about among the fine porcelains, and gnaw at my cakes.
Then from out the more and more profound stillness of my surroundings
the night watchmen with muffled steps begin discreetly to use their
castanets.


  SUNDAY, April 28.

An early morning walk among the silver-sculptors of Y-Tchou, then
through a quite dead part of the town to an antique pagoda half
crumbled away, which stands among some phantom trees of which little
but the bark is left. Along its galleries the tortures of the Buddhist
hell are depicted; several hundred life-sized persons carved in wood
filled with worm-holes, are fighting with devils who are tearing them
to pieces or burning them alive.

       *       *       *       *       *

At nine o'clock I mount my horse and start off with my men, in order
to cover before noon the fifteen or eighteen kilometres which still
separate me from the mysterious burial-places of the emperors; for we
return to Y-Tchou for the night, and set off again to-morrow on the
road to Pekin.

We go out at the gate opposite the one we entered yesterday. Nowhere
else have we seen so many monsters as in this ancient town; their
great sneering faces appear on all sides out of the ground, where time
has almost buried them. A few entire figures may be seen crouching on
their pedestals, guarding the approaches to the granite bridges or
ranged in rows around the squares.

As we leave the town, we pass a poor-looking pagoda on whose walls
hang cages containing human heads recently cut off. And then we find
ourselves once more in the silent fields under the burning sun.

The prince accompanies us, riding a Mongolian colt as rough-coated as
a spaniel. His rose-colored silks and velvet foot-gear form a striking
contrast to our rough costumes and dusty boots, and he leaves behind
him a trail of musk.


IV

The country slopes gently toward the range of Mongolian mountains,
which, though still some distance ahead of us, is now growing rapidly
in height. Trees are more and more frequent, grass grows naturally here
and there, and we have left the dreary ashy soil.

Near by there are a few pointed-topped hills, queerly shaped, with
occasionally an old tower perched on the summit,--the ten or twelve
storied kind, which at once give the landscape a Chinese look, with
superimposed roofs, curved up like dogs' ears, at the corners, with an
Æolian harp at each end.

The air is growing purer; the cloud of dust is left behind as we
approach the unquestionably privileged region which has been selected
for the repose of the celestial emperors and empresses.

We stop at a village, after about a dozen kilometres, to take breakfast
with a great prince of much higher rank than the one who rides with
us. He is a direct uncle of the Emperor, in disgrace with the Empress,
whose favorite he has been, and now entrusted with the guardianship of
the tombs. As he is in deep mourning, he is dressed in cotton like the
poor, and yet does not resemble them. He makes excuses for receiving
us in a dilapidated old house, his own Yamen having been burned by
the Germans, and offers us a very Chinese breakfast, where reappear
the sharks' wings and hinds' nerves. The flat-faced peasants of the
neighborhood peer at us in the meantime through the numerous holes in
the rice-paper window-panes.

We remount at once, after the last cup of tea, to visit the tombs
toward which we have been journeying for three days, and which are
now very near. My confrère of the Pekin Academy, with his big, round
spectacles and his little bird-like body completely lost in his
beautiful silken robes, has rejoined us, and slowly follows along upon
a mule.

A more and more solitary country. No more villages, no more fields! The
road winds along among the hills,--which are covered with grass and
flowers,--surprising and enchanting our unaccustomed eyes. It seems
like a glimpse of Eden after the dusty-gray China we have come through,
where the only green thing was the wheat. The perpetual dust of
Petchili has been left behind; but on the plain below we still perceive
it, like a fog from which we have escaped.

We continue to mount, and soon arrive at the first spurs of the
Mongolian range. Here behind a wall of earth we find an immense Tartar
camp, at least two thousand men, armed with lances, bows, and arrows,
guard of honor of the defunct rulers.

Once more we see a clear horizon, the very memory of which had faded.
It seems as though these Mongolian mountains suddenly huddled together
as though they had all pressed forward; very rocky they are, with
strange outlines, peaks like turrets or pagoda-towers rising above
us,--all of a beautiful purple iris effect.

Ahead of us we begin to see on all sides wooded valleys and forests of
cedar. True, they are artificial forests, although very old,--planted
centuries ago for this funeral park, covering an area twenty miles in
circumference, where four Tartar emperors sleep.

We enter this silent, shadowy place, astonished to find that, contrary
to Chinese custom, it is surrounded by no wall. No doubt it was felt
that this isolated spot would be sufficiently protected by the terror
inspired by the shades of the emperors, as well as by a general edict
of death promulgated in advance against any one who dared to cultivate
a bit of the ground or even sow a seed.

It is the sacred wood _par excellence_, with all its retirement and its
mystery. What marvellous poets of the dead the Chinese are, to be able
to prepare them such dwelling-places!

Here in the shadows one is tempted to speak low, as under the roof
of a temple; one feels it a profanity for the horses to trample
down the turf,--a carpet of fine grass and blossoms, venerated for
ages past, and apparently never disturbed. The great cedars and the
hundred-year-old thuyas, scattered over the hills and in the valleys,
are separated by open spaces where brushwood grows; and under the
colonnade formed by their massive trunks there is nothing but short
grass, exquisite tiny flowers, and moss and lichens.

The dust that obscures the sky on the plains apparently never reaches
this chosen spot, for the magnificent green of the trees is nowhere
dimmed. In this superb solitude, which men have created here and
dedicated to the shades of their masters, the distance disclosed to
us as our road takes us past some clearing or up some height is of
an absolute limpidity. A light as from Paradise falls upon us from
a heaven profoundly blue, streaked with tiny clouds, rose-gray like
turtle-doves. At such moments one gets a glimpse of splendid distant
golden-yellow roofs rising amongst sombre branches, like the palace of
the Sleeping Beauty.

Not a soul in all this shaded road. The silence of the desert! Only
occasionally the croaking of a raven,--too funereal a bird, it seems,
for the calm enchantment of this place, where Death is compelled,
before entering, to lay aside its horror and to become simply the
magician of unending rest.

In some places the trees form avenues which are finally lost to sight
in the green dusk. Elsewhere they have been planted without design,
and seem to have grown of their own accord and to form a natural
forest. All the details recall the fact that the place is magnificent,
imperial, sacred; the smallest bridge, thrown over a stream which
crosses the road, is of white marble of rare design, covered with
beautiful carvings; an heraldic beast, crouching in the shadow,
menaces us with a ferocious smile as we pass by, or a marble obelisk
surrounded by five-clawed dragons rises unexpectedly in its snowy
whiteness, outlined against the dark background of the cedars.

In this wood, twenty miles in circumference, lie the bodies of but
four emperors; that of the Empress Regent, whose tomb was long since
begun, will be added as well as her son's, the young Emperor, who has
had his chosen place marked with a stele of gray marble.[4] And that is
all. Other sovereigns, past or to be, sleep, or will sleep, elsewhere,
in other Edens, as vast and as wonderfully arranged. Immense space is
required for the body of a Son of Heaven, and immense solitary silence
must reign round about it.

The arrangement of these tombs is regulated by unchangeable plans,
which date back to old extinguished dynasties. They are all alike,
recalling those of the Ming emperors, which antedate them by several
centuries, and whose ruins have been for a long time the object of one
of the excursions permitted to European travellers.

One invariably approaches by a cut in the sombre forest, half a mile
in length, which has been so planned by the artists of the past that
it opens, like the doors of a magnificent stage-setting, upon some
incomparable background such as a particularly high mountain, abrupt
and bold, or a mass of rock presenting one of those anomalies of form
and color that the Chinese everywhere seek.

Invariably, also, the avenue begins with great triumphal arches of
white marble, which are, needless to say, surmounted by monsters
bristling with horns and claws.

In the case of the ancestor of the present Emperor, who receives to-day
our first visit, these entrance arches appear unexpectedly in the heart
of the forest, their bases entangled with wild bindweed. They seem to
have shot up, at the rubbing of an enchanter's magic ring, out of what
appears to be virgin soil, so covered is it with moss and with the rare
delicate little plants which nothing disturbs, and which grow only in
places that have long been quiet and respected by man.

Next come some marble bridges with semicircular arches; there are
three bridges exactly alike, for each time an emperor passes, dead or
alive, the middle bridge is reserved for him alone. The architects of
the tombs were careful to have the avenue crossed several times by
artificial streams, in order to have an occasion for spanning them with
these charming curves of everlasting white. On each rail of the bridge
there is an intertwining of imperial fancies. The sloping pavement
is white and slippery, and completely framed in grass, which pushes
through and flourishes in all its joinings.

The crossing is dangerously slippery for our horses, whose steps
resound mournfully on the marble; the sudden noise we make in the
stillness is almost a source of embarrassment to us, making us feel as
though our coming had disturbed in an unseemly manner the composure of
the necropolis. With the exception of ourselves and a few ravens in the
trees, nothing moves and nothing lives in all the immensity of this
memorial park.

Beyond the three arched bridges the avenue leads to the first temple,
with a yellow enamelled roof, which seems to bar our way. At the four
corners of the open space it occupies, rise four rostral columns made
of marble, white as ivory,--admirable monoliths, with a crouching
animal at the top of each one, similar to those enthroned on the
obelisks in front of the palace at Pekin,--a sort of slender jackal,
with long, erect ears, upturned eyes, and a mouth open as if howling
to heaven. This first temple contains nothing but three giant stele,
resting on marble turtles as large as leviathans. They recount the
glory of a defunct emperor; the first is inscribed in the Tartar
language, the second in Chinese, the third in Manchou.

Beyond this temple of stele the avenue is prolonged in the same
direction for an indefinite length, very majestic with its two walls
of black-green cedars, and its carpet of grass, flowers, and moss,
which looks as though it were never trampled upon. All the avenues in
these woods are always thus deserted, always silent, for the Chinese
come here only at rare intervals, in solemn, respectful processions
to perform their funeral rites. And it is the air of desertion in the
midst of splendor which is the great charm of this place, unique in all
the world.

When the Allies have left China, this park of tombs, open to us for a
single moment, will be once more impenetrable for how long we do not
know; perhaps until another invasion, which may cause the venerable
yellow Colossus to crumble away,--unless, indeed, it awakes from its
slumber of a thousand years; for the Colossus is still capable of
spreading terror, and of arming itself for a revenge of which one dares
not think--_Mon Dieu!_ the day when China, in the place of its small
regiments of mercenaries and bandits, shall arm in mass for a supreme
revolt its millions of young peasants such as I have recently seen,
sober, cruel, spare, muscular, accustomed to every sort of physical
exercise, and defiant of death, what a terrifying army it will have,
if modern instruments of destruction are placed in their hands! On
reflection, it seems as though certain of the Allies have been rather
rash to have sown here so many seeds of hatred, and to have created so
much desire for vengeance.

Now, at the end of the dark deserted green avenue the final temple
shows its shining roof. The mountain above, the strange, crenellated
mountain, which has been chosen as a sort of background for all this
sad creation, rises to-day all violet and rose against a bit of
rare blue sky,--the blue of a turquoise turning to green. The light
continues to be modified, exquisite; the sun is veiled by the same
clouds that in color remind one of turtle-doves, and we no longer hear
our horses' steps, so thick is the carpet of grass and moss.

Now one catches sight of the great triple doors of the sanctuary; they
are blood-red with hinges of gold. Then comes the whiteness of three
marble bridges with slippery pavements, in crossing which my little
army makes an exaggerated noise, as though the rows of cedars ranged
like a wall on either side of us had the sonority of a church. From
here on, as if to guard the ever more sacred approach, tall marble
statues are lined up on each side of the avenue. We pass between
motionless elephants, horses, lions, and mute white warriors, three
times the height of man.

As we approach the white terraces of the temple we begin to perceive
the ravages of war. The German soldiers, who were here before ours,
tore out in places, with the points of their swords, the beautiful
gilded bronze decorations of the red doors, taking them to be gold.

In the first court of one of the lateral edifices, whose roofs are
as sumptuously enamelled as those of the big sanctuary, are the
kitchens,--where are prepared at certain times repasts for the Shadow
of Death,--extensive enough to provide for a legion of ogres or
vampires. Enormous ovens, enormous bronze troughs in which whole oxen
are cooked, are still intact; but the pavement is littered with broken
porcelains, with fragments which are the result of a blow with the butt
end of a gun or a bayonet.

On a high terrace, after passing two or three courts paved with marble,
after two or three enclosures entered by triple doors of cedar, the
central temple opens before us, empty and devastated. It is magnificent
in its proportions, with tall columns of red and gold lacquer, but it
has been despoiled of its sacred riches. Heavy silk hangings, idols,
silver drinking-vessels, flat silver dishes for the feasts of the
Shades had almost entirely disappeared when the French arrived, and
what remained of the treasures has been collected in a safe place by
our officers. Two of them have just been decorated by the Emperor of
China for this preservation of property, and it is one of the most
curious episodes of this abnormal war, the sovereign of the invaded
country spontaneously decorating the officers of the invading army out
of gratitude. Behind the last temple is the colossal tomb.

For the interment of an emperor the Chinese cut a piece out of a hill
as one would cut out a portion from a Titanic cake; then they isolate
it by enormous excavations and surround it with crenellated ramparts.
It thus becomes a massive citadel. Then in the bowels of the earth they
dig a sepulchral passageway known only to the initiated, and at its end
they place the emperor, not mummified, but in a thick coffin made of
cedar lacquered in gold, which must prevent rapid disintegration. Then
they seal forever the subterranean door by a kind of screen of faience,
invariably yellow and green, with relief representing the lotus,
dragons, or clouds. Each sovereign in his turn is buried and sealed up
in the same manner,--in the midst of a forest region equally vast and
equally solitary.

At last we arrive at the end of this section of a hill and of this
rampart, stopped in our course by a melancholy screen of yellow and
green faience, which seems to be the end of our forty-league journey.
It is a square screen, twenty feet each way, brilliant with color and
varnish, and in striking contrast to the gray brick wall and gray earth.

The ravens are massed here as though they divined the sinister thing
concealed from them in the heart of the mountain, and receive us with
a chorus of cries.

Opposite the faience screen is an altar of rough-hewn marble, whose
brutal simplicity is in striking contrast to the splendors of the
temple and the avenue. It supports a sort of incense burner of
unknown and tragic significance, and two or three symbolic articles
intentionally rude in workmanship. One is confounded by the strange
forms, the almost primitive barbarity of these last and supreme objects
at the threshold of the tomb; their aspect is intended to create a
sort of indefinable terror. I remember once, in the holy mountain at
Nikko, where sleep the emperors of old Japan, that after the fairy-like
magnificence of gold-lacquered temples, outside the little bronze door
which forms the entrance to each sepulture, I stumbled against just
such an altar, supporting two or three worn emblems, as disturbing as
these in their artificial barbaric _naïveté_.

It seems that in these subterranean passages of the Son of Heaven there
are heaps of treasures, precious stones, and metals. Those who are
authorities in Chinese matters assured our generals that enough would
be found about the body of a single emperor to pay the war indemnity
demanded by Europe, and that the mere threat of violating one of these
ancestral tombs would suffice to bring the Regent and her son to Pekin
submissive and yielding, ready to make all concessions.

Happily for our Occidental honor, no one of the Allies would consent
to this means, so the yellow and green faience screens have not been
broken; every dragon, every lotus, no matter how delicate in relief,
has remained intact. All have paused here. The old emperors, behind
their everlasting walls, may have heard the approach of the trumpets of
the barbarian army and the beating of their drums, but each one of them
could fall asleep again, tranquil as before, surrounded by the empty
glory of his fabulous wealth.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The reference here is not to the tombs of the Mings, which have
for many years been explored by all Europeans on their way to Pekin,
but to the tombs of the emperors of the reigning dynasty, whose very
approaches have always been forbidden.

[4] His subjects have had engraven on this stele an inscription
expressing the hope that their sovereign may live ten times ten
thousand years.




VIII

THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN


I

  PEKIN, Wednesday May 1.

I returned yesterday from my visit to the tombs of the emperors after
three days and a half of journeying in the haze created by the "yellow
wind," beneath a heavy sun constantly obscured by the dust. I am back
once more in Pekin, with our chief general, in my old rooms in the
Palace of the North. Yesterday the thermometer registered 40° in the
shade, to-day only 8° (a difference of 32° in twenty-four hours).
An icy wind drives the rain-drops that are mingled with a few white
flakes, and the neighboring mountains behind the Summer Palace are
quite covered with snow. Yet there are people in France who complain of
our springs!

Now that my expedition is over, I ought at once to go back to Taku and
the squadron, but the general wants me to stay for a great fête he
is to give to the staff officers of the allied armies, and so I have
telegraphed to the admiral, asking for three days more.

[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_
THE LAKE AND SOUTHERN VIEW OF SUMMER PALACE]

In the evening I walk on the esplanade of the Rotunda Palace in company
with Colonel Marchand. The weather is bad, stormy, and cold, and the
twilight comes on too early on account of the rapidly moving clouds.
As the wind parts them one gets glimpses of the mountains behind the
Summer Palace, snowy white against a background of dark clouds.

Confusion reigns about us, but it is the confusion of a fête instead
of that incidental to battle and death, as I had known it here last
autumn. Zouaves and African chasseurs are running about, carrying
ladders, draperies, and armfuls of branches and flowers. The old cedars
in the vicinity of the beautiful pagoda shining with enamel, lacquer,
and gold, are disguised until they look like fruit-trees; upon their
almost sacred branches are thousands of yellow balls that look like big
oranges. Chains supporting garlands of Chinese lanterns go from one to
the other.

It is Colonel Marchand who has planned it all. "Do you think it will be
pretty? Do you think it will be a little unusual? You see, I want to do
it better than the others."

The others were the Germans, the Americans, and all the rest of the
Allies who have given these fêtes before the French. So my new friend
has been in the most feverish state of activity for five or six days,
in attempting to do something that has never been done before, working
far into the night with his men, who share his enthusiasm, putting
into this play-work the same passionate effort he put into conducting
his little army across Africa. From time to time, though, his smile
betrays that he is finding amusement in all this, and will not take
its possible failure tragically, if wind and snow come to upset the
fairyland of his dreams.

No, but this cold is annoying all the same! What shall we do, since
it is to take place in the open air on the terraces of the palace, if
the north wind should blow? What of the illuminations, of the awnings?
And the women, won't they freeze in their evening gowns? For there are
women even here in the heart of the Yellow City.

Suddenly a gust of wind breaks down a whole string of lanterns with
pearl pendants, which are already hung from the branches of the old
cedars, and upsets a row of the flower-pots, which have been brought up
here by the hundreds to give life to these old gardens.


  THURSDAY, May 2.

Messengers have been sent to the four corners of Pekin, announcing that
this evening's fête has been postponed until Saturday, in the hope that
the bad weather will be over by that time. So I have had to send a
despatch, asking the admiral for a prolongation of my freedom. I came
away for three days and have remained almost a month, and am wearing
shirts and waistcoats borrowed here and there from my various army
friends.

This morning I have the honor of breakfasting with our neighbor in the
Yellow City, Marshal von Waldersee.

Covers are laid for the marshal and his staff in a large room finished
in marquetry and carvings, in a part of the palace untouched by the
flames. They are all correctly attired in irreproachable military garb
in the midst of this fantastically Chinese setting.

It is the first time in my life that I have sat down at a table with
German officers, and I had not anticipated the pang of anguish with
which I arrived among them as a guest. Oh, the memories of thirty years
ago, and the special aspects which that terrible year had for me!

That long winter of 1870 was passed in a wretched little boat on
the coast of Prussia. How well I remember my watch on the cold
decks,--child that I was, almost,--and the silhouette of a certain
_King William_ that so often appeared on the horizon in pursuit of us,
at the sight of which we always fled, its balls whizzing behind us
over the icy waters. Then the despair of feeling that our small part
there had been so useless and unavailing! We knew nothing about it
until long afterward; news came seldom, and when it did come it was
in little sealed papers that we opened tremblingly. Over each fresh
disaster, over each new story of German cruelty, what rage filled our
hearts,--childlike in the excess of their violence,--what vows we
made among ourselves never to forget! All this came to me pell-mell,
or rather a rapid synthesis of it all, on the very threshold of this
breakfast-room, even before I had crossed the sill, from the mere sight
of the pointed helmets that hung along the wall, and I felt like going
away.

But I did not, and the feeling disappeared in the dark backward and
abysm of time. Their welcome, their handshakes, and their smiles of
good fellowship made me forget it in a second, for the moment at least.
At any rate, it seems that there is not between them and us that racial
antipathy which is less easily overcome than the sharp rancor of war.

During breakfast this Chinese palace of theirs, accustomed to the
sound of gongs and flutes, echoes to the strains of "Lohengrin" or
the "Rheingold," played in the distance by their military band. The
white-haired marshal was good enough to give me a seat near him,
and, like all of our people who have had the honor to come under his
influence, I felt the charm of his exquisite distinction of manner, of
his kindness and goodness.


  FRIDAY, May 3.

More and more people are coming back to Pekin, until it is almost as
crowded as of yore. The people are very much occupied with funerals.
Last summer the Chinese here were killing one another; now they are
burying one another. Every family has kept its dead in the house for
months, according to their custom, in thick cedar coffins, which
somewhat modify the odor of decay; they bring the dead their daily
meals as well as presents; they burn red wax candles for them; they
give them music; they play the flute and the gong in the continual
fear of not paying them enough honor and of incurring their vengeance
and their ill will. The time has come now to take them to their
graves, with processions a kilometre long, with more flutes and gongs,
innumerable lanterns and gilded emblems, which they hire at high
prices; they ruin themselves for monuments and offerings; they scarcely
sleep for fear of seeing their dead return. I do not remember who it
was who described China as "a country where a few hundred millions of
living Chinese are dominated and terrorized by a few thousand millions
of dead ones." Tombs everywhere and of every form; one sees nothing
else on the plains of Pekin. As for all the thickets of cedar, pine,
and arbor-vitæ, they are nothing but funeral parks, walled in by double
or triple walls, a single park often being consecrated to one person,
thus cutting the living off from an enormous amount of space.

A defunct Lama, whom I visited to-day, occupies on his own account
a space two or three kilometres square. The old trees in his park,
scarcely leafed out as yet, give little shade from the sun, which is
already dangerously hot. In the centre of it is a marble mausoleum,--a
pyramidal structure with small figures and masses of white carvings
which taper skyward, terminating in gilt tips. Scattered about under
the cedars are crumbling old temples, built long ago to the memory
of this holy man, enclosing in their obscurity a whole population of
gilded idols that are turning to dust. Just outside, the cindery soil
where no one ever walks, is strewn with the resinous cones from the
trees, and with the black feathers of the crows, who inhabit this
silent place by the hundreds. As in the imperial woods, April has
brought out a few violet gillyflowers and a quantity of very small iris
of the same color.

All the woods which are used for burial places--and the country is
encumbered with them--resemble this one, and contain the same old
temples, the same idols, and the same crows.

The plains of Petchili are an immense necropolis, where the living
tremble lest they offend one of the innumerable dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

Pekin is not only being repeopled, but rebuilt; hastily though, out of
small blackened bricks from the ruins, so that the new streets will
probably never display the luxurious façades, the lacy, gilded woodwork
of former times.

The great eastern artery that crosses the Tartar City is, of all
the streets of old Pekin, the nearest to what it used to be; life
here is becoming intense, the people swarm. For the length of a
league this avenue, which is fifty metres wide,--of magnificent
proportions, although now very much injured,--is invaded by thousands
of platforms, sheds, tents, or in some cases simply umbrellas stuck
in the ground, where the people who serve horrible drinks and food
dispense their wares, always in delicate China very much decorated;
there are charlatans, acupuncturers, Punch-and-Judy shows, musicians,
and story-tellers. The crowd is divided into an infinite number of
currents by all these small shops and theatres, like the waters of a
river filled with islands, so that there is a constant eddy of human
heads black with dust and filth. Rough, hoarse vociferations, in a
quality of voice unfamiliar to our ears, are heard on all sides, to an
accompaniment of grating violins, noisy gongs and bells. The caravans
of enormous Mongolian camels, which all winter encumber the streets in
endless processions, have disappeared in the solitudes of the North,
together with their flat-faced drivers, who wish to escape the torrid
heat; but their place in the central part of the street, reserved
for animals and vehicles, is taken by numerous small horses and tiny
carriages, and the cracking of whips is heard on all sides.

On the ground in front of the houses, spread out upon the mud and
filth, the extravagant rag-fair that began last autumn is still going
on; the remains of so much pillage and burning are left that it seems
as though there was no end to them,--magnificently embroidered clothing
spotted with blood, Buddhas, grotesque figures, jewels, dead men's
wigs, cracked vases, or precious fragments of jade.

Behind all these ridiculous things, behind all this dusty display, the
greater number of the houses, in contrast with the poverty-stricken
appearance of the crowds, seem astonishingly rich in carvings and
decorations,--a mass of openwork and fine gilding from top to bottom.
Indefatigable artists, with the Chinese patience and skill which
confound us, have carved crowds of little figures, monsters, and birds
in the midst of flowers, and trees on which you can count the leaves.

Last summer, while the Boxers were burning so continually, these
astonishing façades, representing an incalculable amount of human
labor, were consumed by the hundreds; they made Pekin a veritable
museum of carving and gold, the like of which men of to-day will never
again have the time to construct.


  SATURDAY, May 4.

The fête given by our general to the staff officers of the Allies
is really coming off to-night. But before this we are to have a
celebration among ourselves: the inauguration of a new boulevard
in our quarter, from the Marble Bridge to the Yellow Gate,--a long
boulevard whose construction was entrusted to Colonel Marchand, and
which is to bear the name of our general. Never since the far-distant
epoch when her network of paved avenues was laid out has Pekin seen
such a thing,--a straight, level roadway, without ruts or humps, where
carriages may drive rapidly between two rows of young trees.

There is a great crowd to assist at this inauguration. On both sides
of the new, freshly gravelled, and still empty avenue--barred off by
sentinels and ropes from one end to the other--all our soldiers are
lined up, with a sprinkling of German soldiers too, for they are quite
neighborly with ours, and a few Chinese, both men and women, in festive
array. Quaint, charming babies, with cat-like eyes that slant upward
toward the temple, occupy the first row, directly behind the rope; our
soldiers are carrying some of them so that they may see better, and one
big Zouave is walking up and down with two Chinese children, three or
four years old, one on each shoulder. There are people on the roofs,
too,--many of the convalescents are standing about on the tiled roof of
our hospital, and some African chasseurs, seeking a choice place, have
climbed the Gothic tower of the church, which, with the big tricolored
flag floating in the breeze, dominates the entire scene.

There are French flags over all the Chinese doors, and they are
arranged in groups, like trophies, with lanterns and garlands on all
the poles. It is like a sort of foreign exotic Fourteenth of July; if
it were in France the decorations would be commonplace; but here, in
Pekin, they are touching and fine, especially when the military band
arrives, and the "Marseillaise" bursts forth.

The inauguration consists simply of a sort of charge, executed on the
fresh gravel by all the French officers, from the Yellow Gate to the
other extremity of the boulevard, where the general awaits them on
a balcony trimmed with garlands of green, and smilingly offers them
champagne. Then the frail barriers are removed, the crowd disperses
gaily, the children with the cat-like eyes trudge off over the
well-rolled avenue, and all is over.

When we have all returned to France, and Pekin is again in the hands of
the Chinese, I fear that this Avenue du Général-Vayron--though they now
appear to appreciate it--will not last two winters.


II

Eight o'clock in the evening. The long May twilight is almost over, and
the curious lanterns, some of glass with long strings of pearls, others
of rice-paper in the form of birds or of lotus blossoms, are everywhere
lighted among the old cedar branches on the esplanade of the Rotunda
Palace, which I had known plunged in such a melancholy abyss of
sadness and silence. To-night all is movement, life, gay light. Already
uniformed officers of all the nations of Europe, and Chinese, in long
silken robes, with official head-dresses from which depend peacock
feathers, are going and coming amid the wonderful decorations. A table
for seventy is set under a tent, and we are awaiting our incongruous
assembly of guests.

Followed by small suites, they arrive from all quarters of Pekin,
some on horseback, others in carriages, in chairs, or in sumptuous
palanquins. As soon as any person of distinction appears at the lower
door of the inclined plane, one of our military band, who is on the
lookout, orders the playing of the national air of his country. The
Russian Hymn follows the German, or the Japanese the march of the
Bersaglieri. Even the Chinese air is heard, for some one pompously
enters with a large red paper, which proves to be the visiting-card of
Li-Hung-Chang, who is below, but who, in accordance with the etiquette
of his country, is announced before he makes his appearance. Preceded
by similar cards, the Chief-Justice of Pekin and the Representative
Extraordinary of the Empress are the next to arrive. These Chinese
princes, who are to assist at our fête, come in gala palanquins, with a
cavalry escort, and they make their entrance with the most inscrutable
expressions on their faces, followed by a band of servants dressed
in silk. It was hard to have them! But Colonel Marchand, with the
general's permission, made it a point of honor to invite them. Mixed in
with our Western uniforms, mandarins' robes and pointed hats with the
coral button are numerous. Their presence at this barbarian feast right
in the heart of the Imperial City, which we have profaned, will remain
one of the most singular inconsistencies of our time.

Such a length of table as there is,--its legs resting on an imperial
carpet which seems to be made of thick yellow velvet! Bunches of
flowers are arranged in priceless, gigantic old cloisonné vases that
have been taken out of the reserves of the Empress for a single night.
Marshal von Waldersee, with the wife of the French minister at his
side, occupies the seat of honor; then two bishops in violet robes, the
generals and officers of the seven allied nations, five or six women
in evening dress, and, lastly, the three great princes of China, so
enigmatical in their embroidered silks, their eyes partly concealed by
their ceremonial hats and falling plumes.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the close of this strange dinner, when the roses in the big,
precious vases are beginning to hang their heads, our general, toward
the close of his toast, turns to the Yellow Princes: "Your presence
here among us," he says, "is a sufficient proof that we did not come
here to make war against China, but only against an abominable sect,"
etc.

Then the Empress's representative takes up the ball with a suppleness
characteristic of the far East, and, without turning a hair, replies
(he was secretly a furious Boxer): "In the name of Her Imperial Chinese
Majesty, I thank the generous nations of Europe for having extended a
helping hand to our government in one of the gravest crises it has ever
passed through."

A stupefied silence follows, and then glasses are emptied.

During the banquet the esplanade is filled with many uniformed and
gaily dressed persons, of all sorts and colors, who are invited for
the evening. The toasts having come to an end with the reply of the
Chinese, I lean over the edge of the terrace to watch from on high and
from afar the lighting up of the entire place below.

Coming out from under the awnings and the cedar branches, which obscure
the view, it is a surprise and a delight to see the borders of the
lake and the melancholy, silent landscape,--in ordinary times dark,
disturbing, ghostly places as soon as night approaches,--as the lights
come on as if for some fantastic apotheosis.

Soldiers have been stationed in all the old palaces and temples that
are scattered amongst the trees, and in less than an hour, by climbing
along the enamelled tiles, they have lighted innumerable red lanterns,
which form lines of fire, outlining the curves of the multiple-storied
roofs and emphasizing the Chinese characteristic of the architecture
and the eccentricity of the miradors and towers. All along the tragic
lake where the bodies still lie, concealed in the grass, is a row of
lights; and as far as one can see the entire shadowy park, so ruined
and desolate, creates an illusion of gaiety. The old dungeon on the
Island of Jade throws out bright rays and blue fire. The Empress's
gondolas, so long stationary, and more or less damaged, are out
to-night on the reflecting waters, which, with the lights, remind one
of Venice. For a single night an appearance of life pervades these
phantoms of real things. And all this, never seen before, will never be
seen again.

What an astounding contrast with what I used to see when I was alone in
this palace in the autumn twilight! Along the lake groups of people in
ball dress instead of corpses,--my only neighbors last year,--and the
soft mildness of this May night instead of the glacial cold with which
I used to shiver as soon as the sun began to go down.

In the foreground, at the entrance to the Marble Bridge, the great Arc
de Triomphe of China, resplendent with gilding, shines out against
the evening sky, its values all emphasized by a profusion of lights.
Then the bridge across the lake is much lighted, although it seems
luminous itself in its eternal whiteness. In the distance the whole
phantasmagoria--empty palaces and pagodas--emerges from the obscurity
of the trees, and is reflected in the water in lines of fire.

Our five hundred guests are scattered about in sympathetic groups on
the borders of the lake beneath the spring-like verdure of the willows,
along the Marble Bridge or in the imperial gondolas. As they come down
from the terrace they are given gaily decorated lanterns on little
sticks, so that after a time these balls of color, scattered along the
paths, seem from a distance like a company of glow-worms.

From where I stand women in light evening wraps may be seen on the
arms of officers, crossing the white paving-stones of the bridge, or
seated in the stern of the long imperial barques, softly propelled by
the oarsmen. How strange it seems to see these Europeans, almost all
of whom underwent the tortures of the siege, walking quietly about
in dinner dress in the retreat of the sovereigns who had secretly
conspired to kill them!

Decidedly the place has lost all its horrors; there is so much light,
so many people, so many soldiers, that all the vague forms of ghosts
and evil spirits have been driven away for the night.

Something like approaching thunder is heard in the distance, which
proves to be the noise of about fifty tambourines announcing the
arrival of the procession. It was to form at the Yellow Gate, so as
to follow the line of the new avenue, and to disband at the foot of
the Rotunda Palace. The lights of the first division appear at the
entrance of the Marble Bridge, and begin to cross its magnificent white
archway. Cavalry, infantry, and music, all seem to be rolling on in our
direction, with enough noise from the brasses and the tambourines to
make the sepulchral walls of the Violet City tremble, while above the
heads of the thousands of soldiers groups and rows of extravagantly
Chinese colored lanterns are swinging to the movement of the horses'
hoofs or to the rhythm of human shoulders.

The troops have passed, but the procession is not nearly over. A sharp,
delirious noise that gets on one's nerves follows the marches played
by our musicians,--the noise of gongs, zithers, cymbals, bells. At the
same time gigantic green and yellow banners, curiously slashed and
of unusual proportions, begin to appear on the Marble Bridge, borne
by an advancing company of tall, slender persons, with astonishing
underpinnings, who are swinging along like bears. They prove to be my
stilt-walkers from Y-Tchou and from Laï-Chou-Chien from the vicinity
of the tombs, who have taken a three or four days' journey in order to
participate in this French fête!

Behind them a crescendo of gongs, cymbals, and other diabolical Chinese
instruments, announces the arrival of the dragons,--red and green
beasts twenty metres long. In some way or other they are lighted from
within, which by night gives them an incandescent appearance; above
the heads of the crowds they twist and undulate like the sulphurescent
serpents in a Buddhist hell. The entire scene reflected in the
water--the outline of palace and pagoda with their multiple roofs--is
emphasized by lines of red lights that shine brightly this moonless and
cloudy night.

When the big serpents have gone past, the Marble Bridge continues to
pour at our feet a stream of humanity, although an irregular one, which
moves tumultuously along with a formidable noise. It is the rest of our
troops, the free soldiers following the procession with lanterns, also
singing the "Marseillaise," or the "Sambre-et-Meuse," at the top of
their lungs. Along with them are German soldiers arm-in-arm with them,
increasing the volume of sound by adding their voices to the others,
and singing with all their might the old French songs.

       *       *       *       *       *

Midnight. The myriads of little red lanterns on the cornices of the
old palace and pagodas have burned themselves out. Obscurity and the
usual silence have come back to the lake and to the imperial woods. The
Chinese princes have discreetly withdrawn, followed by their silk-robed
attendants, and have been borne far away in their palanquins to their
own dwellings in another part of the shadowy city.

It is now time for the cotillon, after a ball that was necessarily
short,--a ball that seemed an impossibility, for there were scarcely
a dozen dancing women, even including a pretty little twelve-year-old
girl and her governess, to five hundred dancing men. It took place in
the beautiful gilt pagoda, converted for the night into a ball-room;
the dancers occupied the centre of the great empty space beneath the
downcast gaze of the big alabaster goddess in the golden robes, who
was my companion of last summer in the solitude of this same palace,
together with a certain yellow and white cat. Poor goddess! A bed of
natural iris has been arranged for the evening at her feet, and the
injured background of her altar draped in blue satin, against the
magnificent folds of which her figure stands out in ideal whiteness;
her golden dress, embroidered with sparkling stones, shows to great
advantage.

In spite of all effort to light this sanctuary and to decorate it
with lanterns in the form of flowers and birds, it is too freakish a
place for a ball-room. It is impossible to light up the corners and
the gilded arches of the ceiling, and the presiding goddess is so
mysteriously pale as to be embarrassing with that smile of hers, which
seems to pity the puerility of our Occidental hopping and skipping; her
eyes are downcast, that she may not see. This feeling of embarrassment
is not peculiar to myself, for the young woman who is leading the
cotillon, seized by some sudden fancy, leaves the room, taking with her
the tambourine she is using in the figure that has just begun, and is
followed by both dancers and onlookers, so that the temple is emptied,
and our poor little cotillon, languidly continued for a time in the
open air, comes to an end under the cedars of the esplanade, where a
few lanterns are still burning.

       *       *       *       *       *

One o'clock in the morning. Most of the guests have departed, having
far to go in the darkness before reaching their dwellings. A few of
the particularly faithful among the "Allies" remain, it is true, around
the buffet where the champagne continues to flow, and the toasts to
France grow warmer and warmer.

I was about to go off alone to my own palace, not far away, and was, in
fact, already on the inclined plane leading to the Lake of the Lotus,
when some one called out: "Wait for me; it will rest me to go along
with you."

It was Colonel Marchand, and we walked along together over the Marble
Bridge. The great winding sheet of silence and of night has fallen upon
the Imperial City that had been filled for a single evening with music
and light.

"Well," he questioned, "how did it go? what was your impression of it
all?" And I replied as I felt,--that it was magnificently unusual, in
a setting absolutely unparalleled.

Yet my friend Marchand seems rather depressed, and we scarcely speak,
except for the occasional word that suffices between friends. There
was, for one thing, the feeling of melancholy that comes from the
fading away into the past of an event--futile though it was--which had
brought us a few days' distraction from the preoccupations of life;
and more than all this, there was another feeling, common to us both,
which we understood almost without words as our heels clicked on the
marble pavement in the silence that from moment to moment grew more
solemn. It seemed to us that this evening had commemorated in a way the
irremediable downfall of Pekin, or rather the downfall of a people.
Whatever happens now, even though the remarkable Asiatic court comes
back here, which seems improbable, Pekin is over, its prestige gone,
its mysteries are open to the light of day.

Yet this Imperial City was one of the last refuges on earth of the
marvellous and the unknown, one of the last bulwarks of a humanity so
old as to be incomprehensible--nay, almost fabulous--to men of our
times.

[Illustration: THE BEST BOOKS COMPANIONS]




Transcriber's Notes


Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Inconsistent hyphenation fixed.

P. 118: pastboard boxes -> pasteboard boxes.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Last Days of Pekin, by Pierre Loti

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49121 ***