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.