"Well, I've got a pair of storks--they arrived this morning from
Germany--duck and drake, or should you say cock and hen?--at any rate,
I've a sort of idea of trying to domesticate them, and to that end have
had a nest constructed on the roof of this building, where they will be
sheltered by the parapet and be high up above the roof of the City. What
do you say to going to have a look at them and see if they're all
right?"
Extraordinary man! He had always some odd or curious idea in his mind to
improve his artificial fairyland. Nothing loth, we left Pu-Yi and
ascended a winding staircase to the roof of the great building. Save for
the lantern in the center, it was flat and made a not unpleasant
promenade. The storks were at present in a cage, and could only be
distinguished as bundles of dirty feathers in a miscellaneous litter. I
thought my friend's chance of domesticating them was very small, but he
seemed to be immensely interested in the problem.
When we had talked it over, he gave me a cigar and we began to promenade
the whole length of the roof. As I have said, the night was clear and
calm. Again the great stars globed themselves in heaven with an
incomparable glory unknown and unsuspected by those down below. The
silence was profound, the air like iced wine.
From where we were, we had a bird's-eye view of the whole City. Grand
Square lay immediately at our feet, brilliantly illuminated as usual.
Not a living soul was to be seen; only the dragon-fountain glittered
with mysterious life. To the right, beyond the encircling buildings of
the Square, stood the Palacete Mendoza surrounded by its gardens, a
square, white, sleeping pile. I sent a mental greeting to Juanita. So
high was the roof on which we stood that only one of the towers or
cupolas rose much above us. It was the dome of the observatory, exactly
opposite on the other side of Grand Square.
"There is some one who isn't much troubled by sub-lunary affairs," I
said, pointing over the _machicolade_.
Morse nodded, and expelled a blue cloud of smoke. "I guess old Chang is
the most contented fellow on earth," he said. "He is Professor, you
know, Professor Chang, and an honorary M.A. of Oxford University. I had
him from the Imperial Chinese Observatory at Pekin, and I am told he is
on the track of a new comet, or something, which is to be called after
me when he has discovered it--thus conferring immortality upon yours
truly!
"It is an odd temper of mind," he went on more seriously, "that can
spend a whole life in patient seclusion, peering into the unknown, and
what, after all, is the unknowable. Still, he is happy, and that is the
end of human endeavor."
He sighed, and with renewed interest I stared out at the round dome. The
slit over the telescope was open, which showed that the astronomer was
at work. In the gilded half-circle of the cupola, it was exactly like a
cut in an orange.