It is dark when I reach my dwelling-place. The fires are already
lighted in the subterranean furnaces, and a soft heat rises through the
thick yellow carpets. We feel much at home and quite comfortable now in
this palace, which at first seemed so dreary to us.
I dine, as usual, at a small ebony table, which is lost in the long
gallery so dark at either end, in company with my comrade, Captain C.,
who has discovered new and wonderful treasures during the day, which he
has spread out, that we may enjoy them for at least an evening.
First, there is a throne of a style unknown to us; some screens of
colossal size that rest in ebony sockets, on which shining birds are
battling with monkeys amid the flowers of a dream. Candelabra, which
have remained in their silk cases since the seventeenth century,
now hang from the arches above our heads,--a shower of pearls and
enamel,--and many other indescribable things added to-day to our wealth
of articles of antique art.
It is the last time we shall be able to enjoy our gallery in its
completeness, for to-morrow most of these objects are to be labelled
and sent off with the reserve stock. Retaining one salon for the
general, who is to winter here, the rest of this wing of the palace
is to be cut up by light partitions into lodgings and offices for the
staff. This work will be done under the direction of Captain C., who is
chief architect and supervisor, whilst I, a passing guest, will have
only a consulting voice.
* * * * *
As this evening marks the last chapter of our imperial phantasmagoria,
we sit up later than usual. For this once we are childish enough to
array ourselves in sumptuous Asiatic garments, then we throw ourselves
down on the cushions and call opium--so favorable to weary and blasé
imaginations such as ours have unfortunately begun to be--to our aid.
Alas! to be alone in this palace would have seemed magical enough to us
a few years ago without the aid of any avatar.
The opium, needless to say, is of exquisite quality; its fumes, rising
in rapid little spirals, soon make the air sweet and heavy. It quickly
brings to us the ecstasy, the forgetfulness, the relief, the youthful
lightness so dear to the Chinese.
* * * * *
There is absolute silence without; absolute silence and deserted
courts, where all is cold and black. The gallery grows warm, the heat
of the furnace is heavy, for these walls of glass and paper, so frail
as a protection against surprises from without, form rooms almost
hermetically sealed and propitious to the intoxication that comes from
perfumes.
Stretched out upon the silken cushions, we gaze at the receding
ceiling, at the row of arches so elaborately carved into lacework, from
which the lanterns with the dangling pearls are suspended. Chimæras
of gold stand out from the thick folds of the green or yellow silks.
High screens of cloisonné, lacquer, or ebony, the great luxury of
China, shut off the corners, forming luxurious nooks filled with jars,
bronzes, and monsters with eyes of jade,--eyes which squintingly follow
you.
Absolute silence, except that from a distance one of those shots is
heard which never fails to mark the torpor of the night, or a cry
of distress or alarm; skirmishes between Europeans in the posts
and thieving Chinamen; sentinels afraid of the dead or of the night
shooting at a shadow.
In the foreground, which is lighted by one lamp, the only luminous
things whose design and color are engraved upon our already fixed gaze
are four gigantic incense-burners--hieratic in form, and made of an
adorable blue cloisonné--resting on gold elephants. They stand out
against a background of black lacquer traversed by flying birds, whose
plumage is made of different kinds of mother-of-pearl. No doubt our
lamp is going out, for, with the exception of these nearer things,
we scarcely see the magnificence of the place until the outline of
some rare vase five hundred years old, the reflection of a piece of
inimitable silk, or the brilliancy of some bit of enamel recalls it to
our memory.
* * * * *
The fumes of the opium keep us awake until very late, in a state of
mind that is both lucid and at the same time confused. We have never
until now understood Chinese art; it is revealed to us for the first
time to-night. In the beginning we were ignorant, as is all the world,
of its almost terrible grandeur until we saw the Imperial City and the
walled palace of the Son of Heaven; now at this nocturnal hour, amid
the fragrant fumes that rise in clouds in our over-heated gallery, our
impressions of the big sombre temples, of the yellow enamelled roofs
crowning the Titanic buildings that rise above terraces of marble, are
exalted above mere captivated admiration to respect and awe.
In the thousand details of its embroidery and carvings which surround
us in such profusion, we learn how skilful and how exact this art
is in rendering the grace of flowers, exaggerating their superb and
languishing poses and their deep or deliciously pale colorings; then
in order to make clear the cruelty of every kind of living thing, down
to dragons and butterflies, they place claws, horns, terrible smiles,
and leering eyes upon them! They are right; these embroideries on
our cushions _are_ roses, lotus flowers, chrysanthemums! As for the
insects, the scarabs, the flies, and the moths, they are just like
those horrid things painted in gold relief on our court fans.
When we arrive at that special form of physical prostration which
sets the mind free (disengages the astral body, they say at Benares),
everything in the palace, as well as in the outside world, seems easy
and amusing. We congratulate ourselves upon having come to live in
the Yellow City at so unique a period in the history of China, at a
moment when everything is free, and we are left almost alone to gratify
our whims and curiosity. Life seems to hold to-morrows filled with
new and interesting circumstances. In our conversation we find words,
formulas, images, to express the inexpressible, the things that have
never been said. The hopelessness, the misery that one carries about
like the weight on a convict's leg, is incontestably lessened; and as
to the small annoyances of the moment, the little pin-pricks, they
exist no longer. For example, when we see through the glass gallery the
pale light of a moving lantern in a distant part of our palace, we say
without the slightest feeling of disturbance: "More thieves! They must
see us. We'll hunt them down to-morrow!"
And it seems of no consequence, even comfortable to us, that our
cushions and our imperial silks are shut off from the cold and the
horrors by nothing but panes of glass.
X
THURSDAY, October 25.
I have worked all day, with only my cat for company, in the solitude of
the Rotunda Palace that I deserted yesterday.
At the hour when the red sun is setting behind the Lake of the Lotus my
two servants come as usual to get me. But this time, after crossing the
Marble Bridge, we pass the turn which leads to my palace, for I have
to pay a visit to Monsignor Favier, the Bishop of Pekin, who lives in
our vicinity, outside yet quite near the Imperial City.
It is twilight by the time we reach the "Catholic Concession," where
the missionaries and their little band of yellow followers endured the
stress of a long siege. The cathedral, riddled with balls, has a vague
look against the dark sky; and it is so dusty that we see as through a
fog this newly built cathedral, the one the Empress paid for in place
of the one she took for a storehouse.
Monsignor Favier, the head of the French missions, has lived in
Pekin for forty years, has enjoyed for a long time the favor of the
sovereigns, and was the first to foresee and denounce the Boxer peril.
In spite of the temporary blow to his work, he is still a power in
China, where the title of Viceroy was at one time conferred upon him.
The white-walled room where he receives me, lately pierced by a
cannon-ball, contains some precious Chinese bibelots, whose presence
here astonishes every one at first. He collected them in other days,
and is selling them now in order to be able to assist several thousand
hungry people driven by the war into his church.
The bishop is a tall man, with fine, regular features, and eyes that
show shrewdness and energy. He must resemble in looks, as well as in
his determined will, those bishops of the Middle Ages who went on
Crusades to the Holy Land. It is only since the outbreak of hostilities
against the Christians that he has resumed the priests' cloth and
cut off his long Chinese queue. Permission to wear the queue and the
Mandarins' garb was one of the greatest and most subversive favors
accorded the Lazarists by the Celestial emperors.
He was good enough to keep me with him for an hour. A well-dressed
Chinese served us with tea while he told me of the recent tragedy;
of the defence of fourteen hundred metres of wall, organized out of
nothing by a young ensign and thirty sailors, of their holding out for
two or three months right in the heart of an enflamed city, against
thousands of enemies wild with fury. Although he tells it all in a
very low tone, his speech grows warmer, and vibrates with a sort of
soldierly ruggedness as some emotion chokes him, especially whenever he
mentions Ensign Henry.
Ensign Henry died, pierced by two balls, at the end of the last
great fight. Of his thirty sailors many were killed, and almost all
were wounded. This story of a summer should be written somewhere in
letters of gold, lest it should be too quickly forgotten; it should be
attested, lest some day it should no longer be believed.
The sailors under the command of this young officer were not picked
men; they were the first that came, selected hap-hazard on board ship.
A few noble priests shared their vigils, a few brave seminarists took
a turn under their orders, besides a horde of Chinese armed with
miserable old guns. But the sailors were the heart and soul of this
obstinate defence; there was neither weakening nor complaint in the
face of death, which was at all times present in its most atrocious
forms.
An officer and ten Italian soldiers brought hither by chance also
fought heroically, leaving six of their number among the dead.
* * * * *
Oh, the heroism, the lowly heroism of these poor Chinese Christians,
both Catholic and Protestant, who sought protection in the bishop's
palace, knowing that one word of abjuration, one reverence to a
Buddhist image would ensure their lives, yet who remained there,
faithful, in spite of gnawing hunger and almost certain martyrdom! And
at the same time, outside of these walls which protected them in a
measure, fifteen thousand of their brothers were burned, dismembered,
and thrown piecemeal into the river on account of the new faith which
they would not renounce.
Unheard-of things happened during this siege: a bishop,[1] followed
by an ensign and four marines, went to wrest a cannon from the
enemy, balls grazing their heads; theological students manufactured
powder from the charred branches of the trees in the close, and from
saltpetre, which they scaled the walls to steal at night from a Chinese
arsenal.
They lived in a continual tumult under a continual fire of stones and
shot; all the marble bell-towers of the cathedral, riddled by shells,
tottered and fell piecemeal upon their heads. At all hours, without
truce, bullets rained in the court, breaking in the roofs and weakening
the walls. At night especially balls fell like hailstones to the
sound of the Boxers' trumpets and frightful gongs. And all the while
their death-cries, "Cha! Cha!" (Let us kill, let us kill) or "Chao!
Chao!" (Let us burn, let us burn) filled the city like the cries of an
enormous pack of hounds.
* * * * *
It was in July and August under a burning sky, and they lived
surrounded by fire; incendiaries sprinkled their roofs and their
entrances with petroleum by means of pumps and threw lighted torches
onto them; they were obliged to run from one place to another and to
climb up with ladders and wet blankets to put out the flames. They had
to run, run all the time, when they were so exhausted and their heads
so heavy from having had no food, that they could scarcely stand.
Even the good Sisters had to organize a kind of race for the women and
children, who were stupefied from fear and suffering. It was these
sublime women who decided when it was necessary to change positions
according to the direction from which the shells came and who chose the
least dangerous moment to fly, with bowed heads, across a court, and to
take refuge elsewhere. A thousand women without wills or ideas of their
own, with poor dying babies clinging to their breasts, followed them;
a human eddy, advancing, receding, pushing, in order to keep in sight
the white caps of their protectors.
They had to run when, from lack of food, they could scarcely stand, and
when a supreme lassitude impelled them to lie down on the ground to
await death! They had to become accustomed to detonations that never
ceased, to perpetual noise, to shot and shell, to the fall of stones,
to seeing one of their number fall bathed in his own blood! Hunger was
the most intolerable of all. They made soup of the leaves and young
branches of the trees, of dahlia roots from the gardens and of lily
bulbs. The poor Chinese would say humbly, "We must keep the little
grain we have left for the sailors who are protecting us, and whose
need of strength is greater than ours."
The bishop told of a poor woman who had been confined the previous
night, who dragged herself after him imploring: "Bishop, bishop, give
me a handful of grain so that my milk will come and my child may not
die!"
All night long the feeble voices of several hundred children were
heard in the church moaning for lack of food. To use the expression of
Monsignor Favier, it was like "the bleatings of a flock of lambs about
to be sacrificed." But their cries diminished, for they were buried at
the rate of fifteen in a single day.
They knew that not far away in the European legations a similar drama
was being enacted, but, needless to say, there was no communication
between them; and if any young Chinese Christian offered to go there
with a message from the bishop asking for help, or at least for news,
it was not long before they saw his head, with the note pinned to his
cheek, reappear above the wall at the end of a rod garnished with his
entrails.
Not only did bullets rain by the hundreds every day, but the Boxers put
anything that fell into their furious hands into their cannon,--stones,
bricks, bits of iron, old kettles. The besieged had no doctors; they
hopelessly, and as best they could, bound up great horrible wounds,
great holes in the breast. The arms of the voluntary grave-diggers were
exhausted with digging places in which to bury the dead, or parts of
the dead. And the cry of the infuriated mob went on, "Cha! Cha!" (Let
us kill, let us kill!) to the grim sounds of their iron gongs and the
blasts of their trumpets.
Mines went off in different localities, swallowing up people and bits
of wall. In the gulf made by one of them fifty little babies in their
cradles disappeared. Their sufferings at least were over. Each time a
new breach was made the Boxers threw themselves upon it, and it became
a yawning opportunity for torture and death.
But Ensign Henry was always there; with such of his sailors as had
been spared he was seen rushing to the place where he was needed,
to the exact spot where the most effective work could be done,--on
a roof or on the crest of a wall,--and they killed and they killed,
without losing a ball, every shot dealing death. Fifty, a hundred of
them, crouched in heaps on the ground; priests and Chinese women, as
well as men, brought stones, bricks, marble, no matter what, from the
cathedral, and with the mortar they had ready they closed the breach
and were saved again until the next mine exploded!
But they came to the end of their strength, the meagre ration of soup
grew less and less, and they could do no more.
The bodies of Boxers, piled up along the vast enclosure which they so
desperately defended, filled the air with a pestilential odor; dogs
were attracted and gathered in moments of calm for a meal. During the
latter part of the time they killed these dogs from the tops of the
walls and pulled them in by means of a hook at the end of a cord, and
their meat was saved for the sick and for nursing mothers.
On the day when our soldiers at last entered the place, guided by the
white-haired bishop standing on the wall and waving the French flag, on
the day when they threw themselves with tears of joy in one another's
arms, there remained just enough food to make, with the addition of
many leaves, one last meal.
"It seemed," said Monsignor Favier, "as though Providence had counted
the grains of rice."
Then he spoke once more of Ensign Henry. "The only time during the
entire siege," he said, "the only time we wept was when he died. He
remained on his feet giving his orders, although mortally wounded
in two places. When the fight was over he came down from the breach
and fell exhausted in the arms of two of the priests; then we all
wept with the sailors, who had come up and surrounded him. He was so
charming, simple, good, and gentle with even the humblest. To be a
soldier such as he was, to make yourself loved like a little child,
could there be anything more beautiful?" Then after a silence he added,
"And he had faith; every morning he used to come with us to prayers and
to communion, saying with a smile, 'One must be always ready.'"
It is quite dark before I take leave of the bishop, on whom I had
intended to pay a short call. All around him now, of course, everything
is desolate and in ruins; there are no houses left, and the streets
cannot even be traced. I go away with my two servants, our revolvers
and one little lantern; I go thinking of Ensign Henry, of his glory,
of his deliverance, of everything rather than the insignificant detail
of the road to be followed among the ruins. Besides, it is not far,
scarcely a kilometre.
A violent wind extinguishes the candle in its paper sheath, and
envelops us in dust so thick that we cannot see two steps in front
of us; it is like a thick fog. So, never having been in this quarter
before, we are lost, and go stumbling along over stones, over rubbish,
over broken pottery, and human bones.
We can scarcely see the stars for the thick cloud of dust, and we don't
know which way to go.
Suddenly we get the smell of a dead body and we recognize the ditch we
discovered yesterday morning just in time to keep from falling into it.
So all is well; only two hundred metres more and we shall be at home in
our glass palace.