The country slopes gently toward the range of Mongolian mountains,
which, though still some distance ahead of us, is now growing rapidly
in height. Trees are more and more frequent, grass grows naturally here
and there, and we have left the dreary ashy soil.
Near by there are a few pointed-topped hills, queerly shaped, with
occasionally an old tower perched on the summit,--the ten or twelve
storied kind, which at once give the landscape a Chinese look, with
superimposed roofs, curved up like dogs' ears, at the corners, with an
Æolian harp at each end.
The air is growing purer; the cloud of dust is left behind as we
approach the unquestionably privileged region which has been selected
for the repose of the celestial emperors and empresses.
We stop at a village, after about a dozen kilometres, to take breakfast
with a great prince of much higher rank than the one who rides with
us. He is a direct uncle of the Emperor, in disgrace with the Empress,
whose favorite he has been, and now entrusted with the guardianship of
the tombs. As he is in deep mourning, he is dressed in cotton like the
poor, and yet does not resemble them. He makes excuses for receiving
us in a dilapidated old house, his own Yamen having been burned by
the Germans, and offers us a very Chinese breakfast, where reappear
the sharks' wings and hinds' nerves. The flat-faced peasants of the
neighborhood peer at us in the meantime through the numerous holes in
the rice-paper window-panes.
We remount at once, after the last cup of tea, to visit the tombs
toward which we have been journeying for three days, and which are
now very near. My confrère of the Pekin Academy, with his big, round
spectacles and his little bird-like body completely lost in his
beautiful silken robes, has rejoined us, and slowly follows along upon
a mule.
A more and more solitary country. No more villages, no more fields! The
road winds along among the hills,--which are covered with grass and
flowers,--surprising and enchanting our unaccustomed eyes. It seems
like a glimpse of Eden after the dusty-gray China we have come through,
where the only green thing was the wheat. The perpetual dust of
Petchili has been left behind; but on the plain below we still perceive
it, like a fog from which we have escaped.
We continue to mount, and soon arrive at the first spurs of the
Mongolian range. Here behind a wall of earth we find an immense Tartar
camp, at least two thousand men, armed with lances, bows, and arrows,
guard of honor of the defunct rulers.
Once more we see a clear horizon, the very memory of which had faded.
It seems as though these Mongolian mountains suddenly huddled together
as though they had all pressed forward; very rocky they are, with
strange outlines, peaks like turrets or pagoda-towers rising above
us,--all of a beautiful purple iris effect.
Ahead of us we begin to see on all sides wooded valleys and forests of
cedar. True, they are artificial forests, although very old,--planted
centuries ago for this funeral park, covering an area twenty miles in
circumference, where four Tartar emperors sleep.
We enter this silent, shadowy place, astonished to find that, contrary
to Chinese custom, it is surrounded by no wall. No doubt it was felt
that this isolated spot would be sufficiently protected by the terror
inspired by the shades of the emperors, as well as by a general edict
of death promulgated in advance against any one who dared to cultivate
a bit of the ground or even sow a seed.
It is the sacred wood _par excellence_, with all its retirement and its
mystery. What marvellous poets of the dead the Chinese are, to be able
to prepare them such dwelling-places!
Here in the shadows one is tempted to speak low, as under the roof
of a temple; one feels it a profanity for the horses to trample
down the turf,--a carpet of fine grass and blossoms, venerated for
ages past, and apparently never disturbed. The great cedars and the
hundred-year-old thuyas, scattered over the hills and in the valleys,
are separated by open spaces where brushwood grows; and under the
colonnade formed by their massive trunks there is nothing but short
grass, exquisite tiny flowers, and moss and lichens.
The dust that obscures the sky on the plains apparently never reaches
this chosen spot, for the magnificent green of the trees is nowhere
dimmed. In this superb solitude, which men have created here and
dedicated to the shades of their masters, the distance disclosed to
us as our road takes us past some clearing or up some height is of
an absolute limpidity. A light as from Paradise falls upon us from
a heaven profoundly blue, streaked with tiny clouds, rose-gray like
turtle-doves. At such moments one gets a glimpse of splendid distant
golden-yellow roofs rising amongst sombre branches, like the palace of
the Sleeping Beauty.
Not a soul in all this shaded road. The silence of the desert! Only
occasionally the croaking of a raven,--too funereal a bird, it seems,
for the calm enchantment of this place, where Death is compelled,
before entering, to lay aside its horror and to become simply the
magician of unending rest.
In some places the trees form avenues which are finally lost to sight
in the green dusk. Elsewhere they have been planted without design,
and seem to have grown of their own accord and to form a natural
forest. All the details recall the fact that the place is magnificent,
imperial, sacred; the smallest bridge, thrown over a stream which
crosses the road, is of white marble of rare design, covered with
beautiful carvings; an heraldic beast, crouching in the shadow,
menaces us with a ferocious smile as we pass by, or a marble obelisk
surrounded by five-clawed dragons rises unexpectedly in its snowy
whiteness, outlined against the dark background of the cedars.
In this wood, twenty miles in circumference, lie the bodies of but
four emperors; that of the Empress Regent, whose tomb was long since
begun, will be added as well as her son's, the young Emperor, who has
had his chosen place marked with a stele of gray marble.[4] And that is
all. Other sovereigns, past or to be, sleep, or will sleep, elsewhere,
in other Edens, as vast and as wonderfully arranged. Immense space is
required for the body of a Son of Heaven, and immense solitary silence
must reign round about it.
The arrangement of these tombs is regulated by unchangeable plans,
which date back to old extinguished dynasties. They are all alike,
recalling those of the Ming emperors, which antedate them by several
centuries, and whose ruins have been for a long time the object of one
of the excursions permitted to European travellers.
One invariably approaches by a cut in the sombre forest, half a mile
in length, which has been so planned by the artists of the past that
it opens, like the doors of a magnificent stage-setting, upon some
incomparable background such as a particularly high mountain, abrupt
and bold, or a mass of rock presenting one of those anomalies of form
and color that the Chinese everywhere seek.
Invariably, also, the avenue begins with great triumphal arches of
white marble, which are, needless to say, surmounted by monsters
bristling with horns and claws.
In the case of the ancestor of the present Emperor, who receives to-day
our first visit, these entrance arches appear unexpectedly in the heart
of the forest, their bases entangled with wild bindweed. They seem to
have shot up, at the rubbing of an enchanter's magic ring, out of what
appears to be virgin soil, so covered is it with moss and with the rare
delicate little plants which nothing disturbs, and which grow only in
places that have long been quiet and respected by man.
Next come some marble bridges with semicircular arches; there are
three bridges exactly alike, for each time an emperor passes, dead or
alive, the middle bridge is reserved for him alone. The architects of
the tombs were careful to have the avenue crossed several times by
artificial streams, in order to have an occasion for spanning them with
these charming curves of everlasting white. On each rail of the bridge
there is an intertwining of imperial fancies. The sloping pavement
is white and slippery, and completely framed in grass, which pushes
through and flourishes in all its joinings.
The crossing is dangerously slippery for our horses, whose steps
resound mournfully on the marble; the sudden noise we make in the
stillness is almost a source of embarrassment to us, making us feel as
though our coming had disturbed in an unseemly manner the composure of
the necropolis. With the exception of ourselves and a few ravens in the
trees, nothing moves and nothing lives in all the immensity of this
memorial park.
Beyond the three arched bridges the avenue leads to the first temple,
with a yellow enamelled roof, which seems to bar our way. At the four
corners of the open space it occupies, rise four rostral columns made
of marble, white as ivory,--admirable monoliths, with a crouching
animal at the top of each one, similar to those enthroned on the
obelisks in front of the palace at Pekin,--a sort of slender jackal,
with long, erect ears, upturned eyes, and a mouth open as if howling
to heaven. This first temple contains nothing but three giant stele,
resting on marble turtles as large as leviathans. They recount the
glory of a defunct emperor; the first is inscribed in the Tartar
language, the second in Chinese, the third in Manchou.
Beyond this temple of stele the avenue is prolonged in the same
direction for an indefinite length, very majestic with its two walls
of black-green cedars, and its carpet of grass, flowers, and moss,
which looks as though it were never trampled upon. All the avenues in
these woods are always thus deserted, always silent, for the Chinese
come here only at rare intervals, in solemn, respectful processions
to perform their funeral rites. And it is the air of desertion in the
midst of splendor which is the great charm of this place, unique in all
the world.
When the Allies have left China, this park of tombs, open to us for a
single moment, will be once more impenetrable for how long we do not
know; perhaps until another invasion, which may cause the venerable
yellow Colossus to crumble away,--unless, indeed, it awakes from its
slumber of a thousand years; for the Colossus is still capable of
spreading terror, and of arming itself for a revenge of which one dares
not think--_Mon Dieu!_ the day when China, in the place of its small
regiments of mercenaries and bandits, shall arm in mass for a supreme
revolt its millions of young peasants such as I have recently seen,
sober, cruel, spare, muscular, accustomed to every sort of physical
exercise, and defiant of death, what a terrifying army it will have,
if modern instruments of destruction are placed in their hands! On
reflection, it seems as though certain of the Allies have been rather
rash to have sown here so many seeds of hatred, and to have created so
much desire for vengeance.
Now, at the end of the dark deserted green avenue the final temple
shows its shining roof. The mountain above, the strange, crenellated
mountain, which has been chosen as a sort of background for all this
sad creation, rises to-day all violet and rose against a bit of
rare blue sky,--the blue of a turquoise turning to green. The light
continues to be modified, exquisite; the sun is veiled by the same
clouds that in color remind one of turtle-doves, and we no longer hear
our horses' steps, so thick is the carpet of grass and moss.
Now one catches sight of the great triple doors of the sanctuary; they
are blood-red with hinges of gold. Then comes the whiteness of three
marble bridges with slippery pavements, in crossing which my little
army makes an exaggerated noise, as though the rows of cedars ranged
like a wall on either side of us had the sonority of a church. From
here on, as if to guard the ever more sacred approach, tall marble
statues are lined up on each side of the avenue. We pass between
motionless elephants, horses, lions, and mute white warriors, three
times the height of man.
As we approach the white terraces of the temple we begin to perceive
the ravages of war. The German soldiers, who were here before ours,
tore out in places, with the points of their swords, the beautiful
gilded bronze decorations of the red doors, taking them to be gold.
In the first court of one of the lateral edifices, whose roofs are
as sumptuously enamelled as those of the big sanctuary, are the
kitchens,--where are prepared at certain times repasts for the Shadow
of Death,--extensive enough to provide for a legion of ogres or
vampires. Enormous ovens, enormous bronze troughs in which whole oxen
are cooked, are still intact; but the pavement is littered with broken
porcelains, with fragments which are the result of a blow with the butt
end of a gun or a bayonet.
On a high terrace, after passing two or three courts paved with marble,
after two or three enclosures entered by triple doors of cedar, the
central temple opens before us, empty and devastated. It is magnificent
in its proportions, with tall columns of red and gold lacquer, but it
has been despoiled of its sacred riches. Heavy silk hangings, idols,
silver drinking-vessels, flat silver dishes for the feasts of the
Shades had almost entirely disappeared when the French arrived, and
what remained of the treasures has been collected in a safe place by
our officers. Two of them have just been decorated by the Emperor of
China for this preservation of property, and it is one of the most
curious episodes of this abnormal war, the sovereign of the invaded
country spontaneously decorating the officers of the invading army out
of gratitude. Behind the last temple is the colossal tomb.
For the interment of an emperor the Chinese cut a piece out of a hill
as one would cut out a portion from a Titanic cake; then they isolate
it by enormous excavations and surround it with crenellated ramparts.
It thus becomes a massive citadel. Then in the bowels of the earth they
dig a sepulchral passageway known only to the initiated, and at its end
they place the emperor, not mummified, but in a thick coffin made of
cedar lacquered in gold, which must prevent rapid disintegration. Then
they seal forever the subterranean door by a kind of screen of faience,
invariably yellow and green, with relief representing the lotus,
dragons, or clouds. Each sovereign in his turn is buried and sealed up
in the same manner,--in the midst of a forest region equally vast and
equally solitary.
At last we arrive at the end of this section of a hill and of this
rampart, stopped in our course by a melancholy screen of yellow and
green faience, which seems to be the end of our forty-league journey.
It is a square screen, twenty feet each way, brilliant with color and
varnish, and in striking contrast to the gray brick wall and gray earth.
The ravens are massed here as though they divined the sinister thing
concealed from them in the heart of the mountain, and receive us with
a chorus of cries.
Opposite the faience screen is an altar of rough-hewn marble, whose
brutal simplicity is in striking contrast to the splendors of the
temple and the avenue. It supports a sort of incense burner of
unknown and tragic significance, and two or three symbolic articles
intentionally rude in workmanship. One is confounded by the strange
forms, the almost primitive barbarity of these last and supreme objects
at the threshold of the tomb; their aspect is intended to create a
sort of indefinable terror. I remember once, in the holy mountain at
Nikko, where sleep the emperors of old Japan, that after the fairy-like
magnificence of gold-lacquered temples, outside the little bronze door
which forms the entrance to each sepulture, I stumbled against just
such an altar, supporting two or three worn emblems, as disturbing as
these in their artificial barbaric _naïveté_.
It seems that in these subterranean passages of the Son of Heaven there
are heaps of treasures, precious stones, and metals. Those who are
authorities in Chinese matters assured our generals that enough would
be found about the body of a single emperor to pay the war indemnity
demanded by Europe, and that the mere threat of violating one of these
ancestral tombs would suffice to bring the Regent and her son to Pekin
submissive and yielding, ready to make all concessions.
Happily for our Occidental honor, no one of the Allies would consent
to this means, so the yellow and green faience screens have not been
broken; every dragon, every lotus, no matter how delicate in relief,
has remained intact. All have paused here. The old emperors, behind
their everlasting walls, may have heard the approach of the trumpets of
the barbarian army and the beating of their drums, but each one of them
could fall asleep again, tranquil as before, surrounded by the empty
glory of his fabulous wealth.