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.