‘Have you any objection to tell me what it was that led you to guess
that your journey would be to China?’
‘It was more than a guess, monsieur, since I knew I had the honour to
receive the chief of the _Company of the Joyous Peach Blossom_.’
I almost regretted my openness when I saw the effect which this
confession produced on the poet. He turned pale, stammered once or
twice as though unable to speak, and finally turned his back without
a word, and rushed from the room.
It would be tedious to recount the particulars of my journey across
a hemisphere to interview the extraordinary woman who had revived in
our own day the fabled majesty of Semiramis.
I reflected that it was not a little singular that, in an age when
the women of the Western world were clamouring for opportunities
to play a greater part in life, this almond-eyed daughter of the
Manchus had cast ridicule upon their agitation by proving that it
was possible for a woman, born in the most conservative society of
the globe, to achieve the supreme direction of five hundred millions
of human beings, and to make sport of the statesmen of Europe and
America.
[Illustration: “Finally he turned his back without a word, and rushed
from the room.”]
To reach Pekin was an easy matter, but my difficulties began when I
embarked on the dangerous enterprise of travelling into the interior
of the empire, through provinces seething with hatred of the foreign
devil. In spite of the magic influence of my sacred tablet, I found
it prudent to disguise my Western extraction under the official
robes of a mandarin of the fourth class. Thus attired I travelled in
security and comfort, everywhere received with the honours due to a
high official honoured with a summons to the Court of Heaven.
As I approached Sing-fu I left the disturbed area behind me. The
inhabitants of this inland region did not appear to have heard of
the troubles in Pekin or the arrival of the German Michael with his
mailed fist to exact redress for the murder of his Ambassador. They
understood merely that the Son of Heaven had come among them for
repose after the labour of chastising certain barbarian pirates who
had been infesting the sea-coast.
It was given out by my attendants that I had come to report the
successful execution of his Majesty’s sentence on the ruffians; and
if I had really left the heads of the German Emperor, the Tsar of
Russia, and President Roosevelt grinning on spikes over the gates of
Pekin, my reception could not have been more cordial.
I found the Chinese court encamped in a sort of military fashion, in
charming scenery, at the foot of a ridge of low hills, amid groves
of fruit trees watered by a delightful stream. The tents of ten
thousand guards and attendants clustered round the stately pavilions
of the great mandarins, adorned with flags emblematic of their rank;
and in the centre the great Imperial Dragon Standard floated over a
fairy-like palace whose lacquered wood and silken curtains concealed
the sacred person of the Mother of the Sun and Moon.
The disgraced Emperor, whose fate was still a mystery to his
subjects, was closely imprisoned in one wing of the Imperial quarters.
It was now that I realised the full significance of the jade tablet
sent to me by the hands of the student of Chinese literature. The
nearer I penetrated to my august client, the more awe this symbol
seemed to excite, till the attendants who guarded the antechamber
actually fell on their knees at the sight of it, and refused to rise
till I had replaced it in its silken veils.
Impressed, in spite of myself, by this ceremonial homage to a mere
token, I felt a real sentiment of awe as I stood at last in the
presence of the being whom countless millions of men worship as
divine.
Slight, dark-haired, and ivory-pale, the Emperor-maker received me
seated in a simple chair of bamboo. I was not required to perform
the _kowtow_, my audience being a strictly private one. I learned
afterwards, moreover, that a hurried decree of the Board of Rites had
raised my grandfather to the rank of a marquis, in order to qualify
me for a personal interview with her Majesty.
The conversation was carried on in French, through an interpreter,
himself of such high rank that he could not have spoken to me
directly but for the recent ennobling of my ancestry.
‘Her Imperial Majesty has deigned to express a hope that you are not
fatigued by your journey.’
‘It is impossible to be conscious of fatigue in her Majesty’s
presence,’ I returned with a deep bow.
By the slight smile that parted the thin, terrible lips of the
Empress, I acquired the certainty that her Majesty perfectly
understood everything that was being said.
No doubt the interpreter was equally aware of this circumstance, for
he assumed an expression of courtly dismay.
‘I dare not let the Mother of the Emperor know that you have presumed
to offer her a compliment,’ he said rebukingly. ‘I will tell her
Majesty that you await her Imperial commands.’
After a short interchange in Chinese, he turned to me again.
‘I am commanded to tell you that one of the barbarian chiefs who have
made a disturbance in the capital of the Empire has made a demand, as
the price of his departure, which is too insolent to be treated as
anything but a display of the ignorant vanity of a savage. The chief
I speak of exercises some authority among those of the Western devils
who call themselves Dutch or Teutons.’
‘You mean the German Emperor?’ I said incautiously.
The interpreter put on a look of horror, as at some unheard-of
blasphemy.
‘Hush, I implore you. You forget the Sacred Presence. There is only
one Emperor--he whom her Majesty permits to execute her will over
the black-haired people. The vain assumption of Imperial titles by
these foreign bandits is deeply offensive to the Court of Heaven. You
understand? All such upstarts exist merely by the tolerance of her
Majesty. We will speak of this person as the Viceroy of the German
Province.’
I could scarcely resist a smile as I bowed apologetically. I imagined
myself repeating this conversation to Wilhelm II., a ruler not
inclined to take too low an estimate of his own consequence.
‘This rebellious Viceroy,’ the Chinese courtier proceeded, ‘has had
the unheard-of arrogance to require that a Prince of the Manchu
dynasty shall travel to his unknown province to express regret for
the death of its envoy at the Imperial Court.’
This announcement did not come to me as news. In passing through
Pekin I had learned that one of the conditions of peace was that a
Chinese Prince should go to Berlin to tender the Imperial apologies
to the Kaiser for the murder of the German Ambassador during the
Boxer rising.