CONFUCIUS

There was still a half-hour of sunshine after we left the ghostly

Lamas, so we went to pay a call on Confucius, who dwells in the same

quarter,--the same necropolis, one might say,--in an abandonment

equally depressing.

The big worm-eaten door slips off its hinges and falls down as we

attempt to enter, and an owl who was asleep there takes fright and

flies away. Behold us in a sort of mortuary wood, walking over the

brown autumn grass.

A triumphal arch is the first thing we come across, built to pay homage

to some great Chinese thinker. It is of a charming design, although

very peculiar, with three little bell-towers of yellow enamel, which

crown the whole, their curved roofs decorated with monsters at each one

of the corners.

It stands there like some precious bibelot lost among the ruins. Its

freshness is surprising where all else is so dilapidated. One realizes

its great age from the archaic nature of its details; but it is made

of such enduring materials that the wear and tear of centuries in this

dry climate has not affected it. The base is white marble, the rest is

of faience,--faience both yellow and green, with lotus leaves, clouds,

and chimæras in bold relief.

Farther on is a large rotunda which gives evidence of extreme

antiquity; this appears to be the color of dirt or ashes, and is

surrounded by a moat where the lotus and the reeds are dying. This is a

retreat where wise men may come to meditate upon the vanities of life;

the object of the moat is to isolate it and make it more quiet.

It is reached by an arched bridge of marble, with railings that vaguely

suggest a succession of animals' heads. Inside, it is deserted,

abandoned, crumbling away, and the gold ceiling is full of birds'

nests. A really magnificent desk is left, with an arm-chair and a

table. It seems as though a kind of fine clay had been scattered by

handfuls over everything; the ground is covered with it too, so that

one's feet sink into it and one's steps are muffled. We soon discover

that there is still a carpet underneath, and that it is really nothing

but dust which has been accumulating for centuries,--the thick and

ever-present dust which the Mongolian winds blow across Pekin.

After a short walk under the old trees we reach the temple itself,

which is preceded by a court surrounded by tall marble pillars.

This looks exactly like a cemetery, and yet there are no dead lying

under these stele, which are there merely to glorify the memory of

the departed. Philosophers who in bygone centuries made this region

illustrious by their presence and by their dreams, profound thinkers,

lost to us forever, have their names as well as some few of their most

transcendent utterances, perpetuated on these stele.

On either side of the white steps leading to the sanctuary, blocks of

marble are arranged in the form of a tam-tam. These are so old as to

make one's head swim; and upon them maxims intelligible only to a few

erudite mandarins have been written in primitive Chinese characters,

in letters contemporary with and sisters to the hieroglyphs of Egypt.

This is the temple of disinterestedness, of abstract thought, and of

cold speculation. One is struck at once by its absolute simplicity,

for which, up to this point, nothing in China has prepared us. Very

large, very high as to ceilings, very grand and of a uniform blood-red

color, it is magnificently empty and supremely quiet. The columns and

walls are red, with a few discreet decorations in gold, dimmed by time

and dust. In the centre is a bouquet of gigantic lotus in a colossal

vase, and that is all. After the profusion, the debauch of monsters

and idols, the multiplication of human and animal forms in the usual

Chinese pagoda, this absence of figures of any sort is a comfort and a

relief.

In the niches all along the wall there are stele, red like the rest of

the place, and consecrated to the memory of persons still more eminent

than those of the entrance court, with quotations from their writings

carved upon them. The stele of Confucius himself, which is larger than

the others, and has longer quotations, occupies the position of honor

in the centre of this severe Pantheon, and is placed on a kind of altar.

Properly speaking, this is not a temple; it is not a place for

prayer or service. It is rather an academy, a meeting-place for calm,

philosophic discussion. In spite of its dust and its abandoned air, it

seems that newly elected members of the Academy of Pekin (which is even

more than our own the conservator of form and ceremony, I am assured)

are still bound to give a conference here.

Besides various maxims of renunciation and wisdom written from top

to bottom of the stele, Confucius has left to this sanctuary certain

thoughts on literature which have been engraved in letters of gold in

such a way as to form pictures hung on the walls.

Here is one which I transcribe for young western scholars who are

preoccupied with classification and inquiry. They will find in it a

reply twice two thousand years old to one of their favorite questions:

"The literature of the future will be the literature of compassion."

* * * * *

It is almost five o'clock when the gloomy, red, autumn sun goes down

behind great China on Europe's side, and we leave the temples and the

grove behind. I separate from my companions, for they live in the

legation quarter in the southern part of the Tartar City, while I go to

the Imperial City, far from here.

I have no idea how to get out of this dead region, all new to me,

where we have spent the day, and through the lonely labyrinthine

streets of Pekin. I have as a guide a "mafou," who has been lent to me,

and I only know that I have more than a mile to go before reaching my

sumptuous, deserted quarters.

My companions gone, I walk for a few moments in the silent old

uninhabited streets before reaching one of the long, broad avenues

where blue cotton dresses and long-queued yellow faces begin to appear.

There is an interminable row of low houses, wretched, gray things, on

either side of the street, where the tramp of horses raises the black

friable dust in infectious clouds.

The street is so wide and the houses so low that almost the whole of

the twilight sky is visible above our heads; and so suddenly does the

cold come on after sunset that in a moment we freeze.

The crowds are dense about the food-shops, and the air is fetid in the

neighborhood of the butchers, where dog-meat and roasted grasshoppers

are sold. But what good nature in all these people of the streets, who

on the day after battle and bombardment permit me to pass without so

much as an evil look! What could I do, with my borrowed "mafou" and my

revolver, if my appearance did not happen to please them?

For a time after this we are alone in desolate, ruined quarters of

the town. According to the position of the pale, setting sun, it seems

to me that we are on the right track; but if my "mafou," who speaks

nothing but Chinese, has not understood me, I shall be in a predicament.

* * * * *

The return journey in the cold seems interminable to me. At last,

however, the artificial mountain of the imperial park is silhouetted

in gray on the sky ahead of us, with the little faience kiosks and

the twisted trees grouping themselves like scenes painted on lacquer.

We reach one of the yellow enamelled gates of the blood-red wall

surrounding the Imperial City, where two sentinels of the allied armies

present arms. From here I know my way, I am at home; so I dismiss my

guide and proceed alone to the Yellow City, from which at this hour no

one is allowed to depart.

The Imperial, the Yellow, the Forbidden City, encircled by its own

terrible walls in the very heart of great Pekin, with its Babylonian

environment, is a park rather than a city, a wood of venerable

trees,--sombre cypresses and cedars,--several leagues in circumference.

Some ancient temples peep through the branches, and several modern

palaces built according to the fancies of the Empress regent. This

great forest, to which I return to-night as if it were my home, has at

no former period of history been known to foreigners; even ambassadors

have never passed its gates; until recently it has been absolutely

inaccessible and profoundly unknown to Europeans.

This Yellow City surrounds and protects with its tranquil shadows the

still more mysterious Violet City, the residence of the Son of Heaven,

which occupies a commanding square in the centre of it, protected by

moats and double ramparts.

What silence reigns here at this hour! What a lugubrious region it

is! Death hovers over these paths where formerly princesses passed in

their palanquins and empresses with their silk-robed followers. Now

that the usual inhabitants have fled and Occidental barbarians have

taken their places, one meets no one in the woods, unless it be an

occasional patrol or a few soldiers of one nation or another, and only

the sentinels' step is heard before palace or temple, or the cries of

the crows and the barking of dogs about the dead.

I have to cross a region filled with trees, nothing but trees,--trees

of a truly Chinese contour, whose aspect is in itself quite sufficient

to give one the sharp realization of exile; the road goes on under the

deep shadow of the branches that turn the twilight into night. Belated

magpies are hopping about on the withered grass, and the crows, too,

their croakings exaggerated by the cold and the silence. At the end of

a quarter of an hour a corner of the Violet City appears, just at a

turn of the road. She slowly reveals herself, silent, closed, like a

colossal tomb. Her long, straight walls are lost in the confusion and

obscurity of the distance. As I draw nearer to her the silence seems to

be intensified, as though it grew as she broods over it.

[Illustration:

_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_

THE EXECUTIVE PALACE OF THE EMPEROR IN THE FORBIDDEN CITY]

One corner of the Lake of the Lotus begins to come out like a bit of

mirror placed among the reeds to receive the last reflections of the

sky. I must pass along its edges in front of the Island of Jade, which

is approached by a marble bridge; and I know in advance, because I

have seen it daily, the horrible grimace in store for me from the two

monsters who have guarded the bridge for centuries.

At length I emerge from the shadow and oppression of the trees into

open space with the clear sky overhead, leaving the lake behind me.

The first stars are appearing, indicating another of the nights that

pass here in an excess of solitude and silence, with only an occasional

gunshot to break the tragic calm of wood and palace.

The Lake of the Lotus, which during the season of flowers must be the

marvellous field of pink blossoms described by the poets of China, is

now, at the end of October, only a melancholy swamp covered with brown

leaves, from which at this hour a wintry mist rises that hangs like a

cloud over the dead reeds.

My dwelling is on the other side of the lake; and now I have reached

the Marble Bridge which spans it with a beautiful curve,--a curve that

stands out white in spite of the darkness.

At this point a corpse-like smell greets my nostrils. For a week I

have known whence it comes,--from a person in a blue gown lying with

outspread arms, face downward, on the slimy shore; and ten steps

farther on his comrade is lying in the grass.

As soon as I cross the beautiful lonely Marble Bridge through the pale

cloud that hangs over the water I shall be almost home. At my left is

a faience gateway guarded by two German sentinels,--two living beings

whom I shall not be sorry to see,--who will salute me in automatic

unison; this will be at the entrance to the garden where Field-Marshal

von Waldersee resides, in one of the Empress's palaces.

Two hundred metres farther on, after passing more gates and more ruins,

I shall come to a fresh opening in an old wall, which will be my

entrance, guarded by one of our own men,--an African chasseur. Another

of the Empress's palaces is there concealed by its surroundings,--a

frail palace, almost wholly enclosed in glass. Once there, I push

open a glass door decorated with pink lotus flowers, and find again my

nightly fairyland, where priceless porcelains, cloisonné, and lacquer

stand about in profusion on the yellow carpets under the wonderfully

carved arches of ebony.