Chapter 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.