IV

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 greatsneering 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.

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 storiedkind, 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, withhis 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 artificialforests, 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 woodpar 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 plainsapparently 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 heraldicbeast, 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 everlastingwhite. 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; thefirst 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 physicalexercise, 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 motionlesselephants, 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 disappearedwhen 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 ahill 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 barbaricnaïveté.

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.

[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.

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.

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 giventhese 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 certainKing Williamthat 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, innumerablelanterns 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 theirwares, 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 pavedavenues 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 ofJuly; 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.

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 Ihad 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 maketheir 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 tohang 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 soonas 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 Iused 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 quietlyabout 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 yellowbanners, 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 irishas 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 darknessbefore 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.

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