The plain resembles that of yesterday, yet it is a little more green
and wooded. The wheat, sown in rows, as with us, grows miraculously
in this soil, made up of dust and cinders though it apparently is.
Everything seems less desolate as one gets farther away from the
region of Pekin, and ascends almost imperceptibly towards those great
mountains of the west, which are appearing with greater and greater
distinctness in front of us. The "yellow wind," too, blows with less
severity, and when it dies down for a few moments, when the blinding
dust decreases, it is like the country in the north of France, with its
ploughed fields and clumps of elms and willows. One forgets that this
is the heart of China, on the other side of the globe, and one expects
to see peasants from home pass along the paths. But the few toilers who
are bending over the earth have long braids, coiled about their heads
like crowns, and their bare backs are saffron-colored.
[Illustration: CHINESE PEASANT CULTIVATING RICE FIELDS WITH NATIVE
PLOW]
All is peace in these sunshine-flooded fields, in these villages built
in the scanty shade of the willows. The people seem to live happily,
cultivating the friendly soil in primitive fashion, guided by the
customs of five thousand years ago. Aside from the possible exactions
of a few mandarins,--and there are many who are kind,--these Chinese
peasants still live in the Golden Age, and I can hardly conceive of
their accepting the joys of the "New China" dreamed of by Occidental
reformers. Up to this time, it is true, the invasion has scarcely
reached them; in this part of the country, occupied solely by the
French, our troops have never played any other rôle than that of
defender of the villagers against pillaging Boxers. Ploughing, sowing,
all the work of the fields, has been quietly done in season, and it is
impossible not to be struck with the very different look of other parts
of the country which I will not designate, where there has been a reign
of terror, and where the fields have been destroyed and have become
desert steppes.
* * * * *
At about half-past four, against a background of mountains which are
beginning to look tall to us, a village appears, the first sight of
which, like that of yesterday, is rather formidable with its high
crenellated ramparts.
A horseman comes out to meet me once more, like yesterday, and again
it is the captain in command of the post of marine infantry stationed
there since last autumn.
Watchers stationed on the walls have perceived us from afar by the
cloud of dust our horses raise on the plain. As soon as we approach
we see emerging from the old gates the official procession coming to
meet us, with the same emblems as at Laï-Chou-Chien,--the same big
butterfly, the same red parasols, the same shields and banners. Each
Chinese ceremonial has been for centuries regulated by unvarying usages.
However, the people who receive me to-day are much more elegant and
undoubtedly richer than those of yesterday. The mandarin, who comes
down from his sedan chair to await me at the side of the road, having
sent his red paper visiting-card on before him a hundred feet or so,
stands surrounded by a group of important-looking persons in sumptuous
silk robes. He himself is a distinguished-looking old man, who wears
in his hat the peacock feather and the sapphire button. There is an
enormous crowd waiting to see me make my entrance to the funereal sound
of the gongs and the prolonged cries of the heralds. On the top of the
ramparts figures may be seen peering through the battlements with their
small oblique eyes, and even in the dim gateways double rows of yellow
men crowd against the walls. My interpreter confesses, however, that
there is a general disappointment. "If he is a man of letters," they
ask, "why is he dressed like a colonel?" (The scorn of the Chinese for
the military profession is well known.) My horse, however, somewhat
restores my prestige. Tired as the poor Algerian animal is, he still
has a certain carriage of the head and tail when he feels that he is
observed, and especially if he hears the sound of the gong.
Y-Tchou, the city wherein we find ourselves, shut in by walls thirty
feet high, still contains fifteen thousand inhabitants in spite of
its deserted districts and its ruins. There is a great crowd along
our route, in all the little streets and in front of the little old
shops where antediluvian occupations are carried on. It was from this
very place that the terrible movement of hatred against foreigners
was launched last year. In a convent of Bonze nuns in the neighboring
mountain the war of extermination was first preached, and these people
who receive me so kindly were the first Boxers. Ardent converts for
the moment to the French cause, they cheerfully decapitate those of
their own people who refuse to come to terms, and put their heads in
the little cages which adorn the gates of their city; but if the wind
should change to-morrow, I should see myself cut up by them to the
tune of the same old gongs and with the same enthusiasm which they
put into my reception. When I have taken possession of the house set
apart for me, back of the residence of the mandarin at the end of an
interminable avenue of old porticoes, and monsters who show me their
teeth in tiger-like smiles, a half-hour of daylight still remains, and
I go to pay a visit to a young prince of the imperial family, stationed
at Y-Tchou in the interests of the venerable tombs.
First comes his garden, melancholy in the April twilight. It lies
between walls of gray brick, and is very much shut in for a town
already so walled. Gray also is the rockwork outlining the small
squares or lozenges, where big red, lavender, and pink peonies
flourish. These, unlike our own, are very fragrant, and to-night fill
the air of this gloomy enclosure with an excessive odor. There are
also rows of little porcelain jars inhabited by tiny fish--regular
monstrosities--red fish or black fish with cumbersome fins and
extravagant tails, giving the effect of a flounced petticoat; fish with
enormous terrifying eyes, which protrude like those of the heraldic
dragons and which are the result of I do not know what mysterious form
of breeding. The Chinese, who torture the feet of their women, also
deform their trees, so that they remain dwarfed and crooked. They train
their fruits to resemble animals, and their animals to look like the
chimæras of a dream.
It is already dark in the prince's apartment, which looks out on this
prison-like garden, and one sees little, on first entering, but
draperies of red silk, long canopies falling from numerous "parasols of
honor," which are open and standing upright on wooden supports. The air
is heavy, saturated with opium and musk. There are deep red divans with
silver pipes lying about for smoking the poison of which China is in a
fair way to perish. The prince, who is twenty or twenty-two years old,
is of a sickly ugliness, with divergent eyes; he is perfumed to excess,
and dressed in pale silk in tones of mauve or lilac.
* * * * *
In the evening dinner with the mandarin, where the commandant of
the French post, the prince, two or three notables, and one of my
"confrères," a member of the Academy of China,--a mandarin with a
sapphire button,--are the guests. Seated in heavy square arm-chairs,
there are six or seven of us around a table decorated with small,
exquisite, and unusual bits of old porcelain, so tiny as to seem to be
part of a doll service. Red candles in high copper chandeliers give us
our light.
This very morning the entire province had orders to leave off the
winter head-dress and to put on the summer one,--a conical affair,
resembling a lamp-shade, from which fall tufts of reddish horse-hair or
peacock's or crow's feathers, according to the rank of the wearer. And
since it is the style to wear them at dinner, hats of this description
make grotesque figures of the guests.
As for the ladies of the house, they, alas, remain invisible, and it
would be the worst possible breach of good form to ask for them or to
refer to them in any way. It is well known that a Chinaman compelled to
speak of his wife must refer to her in an indirect way, using, whenever
possible, a qualifying term, devoid of all compliment, as, for example,
"my offensive" or "my nauseating" wife.
The dinner begins with preserved prunellas and a great variety of
dainty sweetmeats, which are eaten with little chop-sticks. The
mandarin makes excuses for not offering me sea-swallows' nests, but
Y-Tchou is so far from the coast that it is difficult to secure what
one would like. But to make up for this lack, there is a dish of
sharks' fins, another of the bladder of the sperm whale, another still
of hinds' nerves, besides a ragout of water-lily roots with shrimps'
eggs.
The inevitable odor of opium and musk mingled with the flavor of
strange sauces pervades the room, which is white with a black ceiling.
Its walls are decorated with water-colors on long strips of precious
yellow paper, containing representations of animals or of huge flowers.
A score of servants flock about us with the same sort of head-dress as
their masters, and clad in beautiful silk gowns with velvet corselets.
At my right my "confrère" of the Chinese Academy discourses to me of
another world. He is old and quite withered-looking from the abuse
of the fatal drug; his small face, shrivelled to a mere nothing, is
obliterated by his conical hat and by his big blue goggles.
"Is it true," he inquires, "that the Middle Empire occupies the top
of the territorial globe, and that Europe hangs on one side at an
uncomfortable angle?"
It appears that he has at the ends of his fingers more than forty
thousand characters in writing, and that he is able to improvise sweet
poetry on any subject you may choose. From time to time I am aghast at
the sight of his skeleton-like arm emerging from sleeves like pagodas,
and stretching out toward some dish. His object is to secure with his
own two-tined fork some choice morsel for me, which compels me to
resort to perpetual and difficult jugglery in order not to have to eat
the things.
After several preposterous light dishes, boned ducks appear, then a
copious variety of viands succeed one another until the guests announce
that they really have had enough. Then they bring opium pipes and
cigarettes, and soon it is time to take a palanquin for the nocturnal
festival they are arranging for me.
Outside, in the long avenue of porticoes, under the starry sky, all the
servants of the Yamen await us with big paper lanterns, painted with
bats and chimæras. A hundred friendly Boxers are also there, holding
torches to light us better. Each of us gets into a palanquin, and the
bearers trot off with us, while flaming torches run along beside us,
and gongs, also running, begin the noise of battle at the head of our
procession.
By the light of dancing torches we file rapidly past the open stalls,
past the groups of natives assembled to watch us, past the grimacing
monsters ranged along our route.
At the rear of an immense court stands a new building, where by the
light of the torches we read the astonishing inscription, "Parisiana
of Y-Tchou." "Parisiana" in this ultra-Chinese town, which until the
previous autumn had never seen a European approach its walls! Our
bearers stop there, and we find it is a theatre improvised this winter
by our sixty soldiers to help pass away the glacial evenings.
I had promised to assist at a gala performance given for me by these
grown-up children this evening. And of all the charming receptions that
have been tendered me here and there all over the world, none has
moved me more than this one arranged by a few soldiers exiled in a lost
corner of China. Their reserved smiles of welcome, the few words one of
them undertook to say for all, were more touching than any banquet or
formal address, and I was glad to press the hands of the brave soldiers
who dared not offer them.
In order that I might have a souvenir of their evening's hospitality at
Y-Tchou, they got up a subscription and presented me with a very local
gift,--one of those red silk parasols with long falling draperies,
which it is the custom in China to carry in front of men of mark. And
cumbrous as the thing is, even when folded, it is needless to say that
I shall take it with great care to France.
They next gave me an illustrated programme, on which the name of each
actor figured, followed by a pompous title,--"Monsieur the soldier
so-and-so of the Comédie-Française," or "Monsieur the corporal
so-and-so of the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt." We take our places. It is a
real theatre that they have made, with a raised stage, scenery, and a
curtain.
In the Chinese arm-chairs, which are placed in the first row, their
captain is seated next to me; then come the mandarin, the prince of
the blood, and two or three other notables, with long queues. Behind
us are the under-officers and the soldiers; several yellow babies in
ceremonial toilettes mingle familiarly with them, even climbing up on
their knees. They are pupils from their school. For they have started a
school, like the one at Laï-Chou-Chien, to teach French to the children
of the neighborhood. A sergeant presented me to an inimitable youngster
of not more than six, dressed for the occasion in a beautiful gown, his
little short, thick queue tied with red silk, who recited for me the
beginning of "Maître corbeau sur un arbre perché," in a deep voice,
rolling his eyes to the ceiling the while.
Three taps and the curtain rises. First comes a farce, by I know not
whom, but certainly much retouched by themselves with an unexpected
turn of wit which is irresistible. The ladies, the mothers-in-law, with
false hair made of oakum, are indescribable. Then more comic scenes and
songs from the "Black Cat." The Chinese guests on their throne-like
chairs remain as impassive as the Buddhas of the pagodas. What do their
Asiatic brains make of all this French gaiety?
Before the last numbers on the programme are over the sudden thundering
of gongs is heard outside, the playing of citherns, and the clashing
of cymbals, and of all the rest of the iron instruments of China. It
is the prelude to the fête which the mandarin is to give me, which is
to take place in the courtyard of the army quarters, and in which our
soldiers naturally are to take part.
A profusion of lanterns illumines the court, together with the flaming
torches of a hundred Boxers. First there is a stilt dance, then
follow all the gymnastic societies of the adjoining district in their
specialties. Little country boys twelve years old, costumed like lords
of old dynasties, have a sham battle, flourishing their swords and
jumping about like kittens, prodigies of quickness and lightness. Then
come the young men of another village, who throw off their garments and
begin to twirl pitchforks all around their naked bodies; by a twist of
the wrist or by an imperceptible movement of the foot they are turned
so rapidly that very soon they are no longer forks to our eyes, but a
row of endless serpents about the breasts of the men. Then suddenly,
more deftly than in the best managed circus, a horizontal bar is placed
before us, and acrobats, naked to the waist, and superbly muscular,
give a performance. They belong to the mandarin, and are the very men
who just now served us at the table in beautiful silken robes.
It all ended with very long and noisy fireworks. When the pieces
attached to invisible bamboo stems exploded in the air, delicate and
luminous paper pagodas floated off across the starry sky, fabrics of a
Chinese dream, trembling, imponderable, which suddenly took fire and
disappeared in smoke.
* * * * *
It is late when we return through the little dark streets, now all
asleep. Our bearers trot along, escorted by a thousand dancing lights
from torches and lanterns.
Toward midnight I am at last alone, in the depths of the Yamen, in my
separate dwelling, the avenue leading to it guarded by motionless,
crouching beasts. On my centre-table they have placed a luncheon of
all the kinds of cakes known to China. Trees in fruit, in flower, and
without leaves, decorate my small tables,--dwarf trees, of course,
grown in porcelain jars, and so tortured as to become unnatural. A
little pear-tree has assumed the regular form of a lyre composed of
white blossoms; a small peach-tree resembles a crown made of pink
flowers. Everything in my room, except these fresh spring plants, is
old, warped, worm-eaten, and at the holes in a ceiling that was once
white appear the faces of innumerable rats, whose eyes follow me about
the room. As soon as I put out my light and lie down in my great bed
with carvings representing horrible animals, I hear all these rats
come down, move about among the fine porcelains, and gnaw at my cakes.
Then from out the more and more profound stillness of my surroundings
the night watchmen with muffled steps begin discreetly to use their
castanets.
SUNDAY, April 28.
An early morning walk among the silver-sculptors of Y-Tchou, then
through a quite dead part of the town to an antique pagoda half
crumbled away, which stands among some phantom trees of which little
but the bark is left. Along its galleries the tortures of the Buddhist
hell are depicted; several hundred life-sized persons carved in wood
filled with worm-holes, are fighting with devils who are tearing them
to pieces or burning them alive.
* * * * *
At nine o'clock I mount my horse and start off with my men, in order
to cover before noon the fifteen or eighteen kilometres which still
separate me from the mysterious burial-places of the emperors; for we
return to Y-Tchou for the night, and set off again to-morrow on the
road to Pekin.
We go out at the gate opposite the one we entered yesterday. Nowhere
else have we seen so many monsters as in this ancient town; their
great sneering faces appear on all sides out of the ground, where time
has almost buried them. A few entire figures may be seen crouching on
their pedestals, guarding the approaches to the granite bridges or
ranged in rows around the squares.
As we leave the town, we pass a poor-looking pagoda on whose walls
hang cages containing human heads recently cut off. And then we find
ourselves once more in the silent fields under the burning sun.
The prince accompanies us, riding a Mongolian colt as rough-coated as
a spaniel. His rose-colored silks and velvet foot-gear form a striking
contrast to our rough costumes and dusty boots, and he leaves behind
him a trail of musk.