Part 7

It is the same person in whose veins the vigor of half-deified ancestors is exhausted, who has too long remained inactive, concealed in this palace more sacred than a temple; the same who neglects and envelops in twilight the diminishing place where he is pleased to live. The immense setting in which former emperors lived frightens him and he abandons it all; grass and brushwood grow on the majestic marble railings and in the grand courtyards; crows and pigeons by the hundreds make their nests in the gilded vaults of the throne room, covering with dirt and dung the rich and curious rugs left there to be ruined. This inviolable palace, a league in circumference, which no foreigner has ever seen, of which one can learn nothing, guess nothing, has in store for Europeans who enter it for the first time the surprise of mournful dilapidation and the silence of a tomb.

The pale Emperor never occupied the throne rooms. No, what suited him was the quarter where the small gardens were, and the enclosed yards, the quaint quarter where the eunuchs tried to prevent our going. The alcove-bed in its deep recess, with its curtains like the blue of night, indicates fear.

The small private apartments behind this gloomy chamber extend like subterranean passages into still deeper shadows; ebony is the prevailing wood; everything is intentionally sombre, even the mournful mummified bouquets under their glass cases. There is a soft-toned piano which the young Emperor was learning to play, in spite of his long, brittle nails; a harmonium, and a big music-box that gives Chinese airs with a tone that seems to come from beneath the waters of a lake.

Beyond this comes what was doubtless his most cherished retreat,--it is narrow and low like the cabin of a ship, and exhales the fine odor of tea and dried rose-leaves.

There, in front of a small airhole covered with rice paper, through which filters a little sombre light, lies a mattress, covered with imperial golden-yellow silk, which seems to retain the imprint of a body habitually extended upon it. A few books, a few private papers, are scattered about. Fastened to the wall are two or three unimportant pictures, not even framed, representing colorless roses, and written in Chinese characters underneath are the last orders of the physician for this chronic invalid.

What was the real character of this dreamer, who shall ever say? What distorted views of life had been bequeathed to him of the things of this world and of the world beyond? What do all these gruesome symbols signify to him? The emperors, the demigods, from whom he descends, made old Asia tremble; tributary sovereigns came from great distances to prostrate themselves, filling this place with banners and processions more magnificent than our imaginations can picture; within these same walls, so silent to-day, how and under what passing phantasmagoric aspects did he retain the stamp of the wonderful past?

And what confusion must have entered his unfathomable little brain when the unprecedented act was accomplished, and events occurred which he never in his wildest fears could have anticipated! His palace, with its triple walls, violated to its most secret recesses; he, the Son of Heaven, torn from the dwelling where twenty generations of his ancestors had lived inaccessible; obliged to flee, and in his flight to permit himself to be seen, to act in the light of day like other men, perhaps even to implore and to wait!

* * * * *

Just as we are leaving the abandoned room our orderlies, who purposely remained behind, laughingly throw themselves on the bed with the nocturnal blue curtains, and I hear one of them remark gaily in an aside and with a Gascon accent: "Now, old fellow, we can say that we have lain on the bed of the Emperor of China."

IV

MONDAY, October 22.

Chinese workmen,--amongst whom we are warned that there are spies and Boxers,--who look after the fires in the two furnaces in our palace, have kept us almost too warm all night. When we get up there is, as there was yesterday, another illusion of summer on our light verandah with the green columns painted with pink lotus flowers. An almost burning sun is rising and shining upon the ghostly pilgrimage which I am about to make on horseback, toward the west, outside the Tartar City, and through the ashy, silent, ruined suburbs.

In this direction there were, scattered through the dusty country, Christian cemeteries which even in 1860 had never been violated by the yellow race. But this time they furiously attacked the dead, and left chaos and abomination behind them. The oldest remains, those of missionaries who had been sleeping there for three centuries, were disinterred, crushed, piled up and set on fire in order to destroy, according to Chinese beliefs, whatever might still be left of their souls. One must be somewhat acquainted with the ideas of the country in order to understand the enormity of this supreme insult to all our Occidental races.

The cemetery of the Jesuit Fathers was singularly splendid. They were formerly very powerful with the Celestial Emperors, and borrowed for their own tombs the funereal emblems of the princes of China. The ground is literally strewn now with big marble dragons and tortoises, and with tall stele with chimæras coiled about them; all these carvings have been thrown down and smashed; the heavy stones of the vaults have been broken also, and the ground thoroughly overturned.

A more modest enclosure, not far away, has for a long time been the burial-place for the European legations. It has undergone the same treatment as the beautiful cemetery of the Jesuits. The Chinese have ransacked the graves, destroyed the bodies, and even violated the coffins of little children. Some few human bones are still lying on the ground, while the crosses that marked the graves are placed upside down. It is one of the most poignantly affecting sights that ever met my eyes.

Some good Sisters who lived near by kept a school for Chinese children; of their houses nothing is left but a pile of bricks and ashes, even the trees have been uprooted and stuck back in the ground head foremost.

This is their story:--

They were alone one night when about a thousand Boxers came along, shouting their death cries and playing gongs. The Sisters began to pray in their chapel as they awaited death. However, the noise died away, and when day broke no one was in sight, so they escaped to Pekin and took shelter with the bishop, taking their frightened little pupils with them. When the Boxers were asked later why they had not entered and killed the Sisters, they replied: "Because we saw soldiers' heads and guns all around the convent walls." So the Sisters owed their lives to this hallucination of their executioners.

The wells in the deserted gardens fill the air to-day with odors of the dead. There were three large cisterns which furnished a water so pure that they sent all the way from the legations to get it. The Boxers filled these wells up to the brim with the mutilated bodies of little boys from the Brothers' school and from Christian families in the neighborhood. Dogs came to eat from the horrible pile which came up to the level of the ground; but they had their fill, and so the bodies were left, and have been so preserved by the cold and dryness that the marks of torture upon them may still be seen. One poor thigh has been slashed in stripes after the manner in which bakers sometimes mark their loaves of bread, another poor hand is without nails. And here is a woman from whom one of the private parts of her body has been cut and placed in her mouth, where it was left by the dogs between her gaping jaws. The bodies are covered with what looks like salt, but which proves to be white frost, which in shady places never melts here. Yet there is enough clear, implacable sunshine to bring out the emaciation and to exaggerate the horrors of the open mouths, their agonized expressions, and the rigidity of the anguished positions of the dead.

There is not a cloud to-day, but a pale sky which reflects a great deal of light. All winter, it seems, it is much the same; even in the coldest weather rains and snows are very exceptional in Pekin.

After our brief soldiers' breakfast, served on rare china in the long gallery, I leave the Palace of the North to install myself in the kiosk on the opposite shore, which I selected yesterday, and to begin my work. It is about two o'clock; a summer's sun shines on my solitary path, on the whiteness of the Marble Bridge, on the mud of the Lake, and on the bodies that sleep amongst the frosted lotus leaves.

The guards at the entrance to the Rotunda Palace open and close behind me the red lacquered doors. I mount the inclined plane leading to the esplanade, and here I am alone, much alone, in the silence of my lofty garden and my strange palace.

In order to reach my work-room, I have to go along narrow passageways between old trees and the most unnatural rockwork. The kiosk is flooded with light, the beautiful sunshine falls on my table and on my black seats with their cushions of golden yellow; the beautiful melancholy October sunshine illumines and warms my chosen retreat, where the Empress, it seems, loved to come and sit and watch from this high point her lake all pink with flowers.

The last butterflies and the last wasps, their lives prolonged by this hot-house warmth, beat their wings against the window-panes. The great imperial lake is spread out before us, spanned by the Marble Bridge; venerable trees form a girdle around shores out of which rise the fanciful roofs of palaces and pagodas,--roofs that are one marvellous mass of faience. As in the landscapes painted on Chinese fans, there are groups of tiny rocks in the foreground, and small enamelled monsters from a neighboring kiosk, while in the middle distance there are knotted branches which have fallen from some old cedar.

I am alone, entirely and deliciously alone, high up in an inaccessible spot whose approaches are guarded by sentinels. There is the occasional cry of a crow or the gallop of a horse down below, at the foot of the rampart whereon my frail habitation rests, or the passing of an occasional messenger. Otherwise nothing; not a single sound near enough to trouble the sunny quiet of my retreat. No surprise is possible, no visitor.

* * * * *

I have been working for an hour, when a light rustling behind me from the direction of the entrance gives me the feeling of some discreet and agreeable presence. I turn round, and there is a cat who has stopped short with one foot in the air, hesitating and looking me straight in the eye, as if to ask: "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

I call him quietly, he replies with a plaintive miaul; and I, always tactful with cats, go on with my writing, knowing very well that in a first interview one must not be too insistent.

He is a very pretty cat, yellow and white, with the distinguished and elegant air of a grand seignior. A moment later and he is rubbing against my leg; so then I put my hand slowly down on the small, velvety head, which, after a sudden start, permits my caresses and abandons itself to them. It is over; the acquaintance is made. He is evidently a cat accustomed to petting, probably an intimate of the Empress. To-morrow and every day I shall beg my orderly to bring him a cold luncheon from my rations.

* * * * *

The illusion of summer ends with the day. The sun sets big and red behind the Lake of the Lotus, all at once taking on a sad, wintry look; at the same time a chill comes over all things, and the empty palace grows suddenly gloomy. For the first time that day I hear footsteps approaching, resounding in the silence on the pavement of the esplanade. My servants, Osman and Renaud, are coming for me according to instructions; they are the only human beings for whom the gate of the walls below has orders to open.

It is icy cold as we cross the Marble Bridge in the twilight to return to our home, and the moisture is gathering in clouds over the lake, as it does every night.

After supper we go on a man hunt in the dark, through the courts and rooms of the place. On the preceding nights we had observed through the transparent window-panes disturbing little lights which were promptly extinguished if we made any noise. These lights moved up and down the uninhabited galleries, some distance away, like fireflies. To-night's effort brings about the capture of three unknown men who with cutlasses and dark lanterns have climbed over the walls to pilfer in the imperial reserves. There are two Chinese and one European, a soldier of one of the allied nations. Not to make too much ado over it, we content ourselves with putting them out after cudgelling them well and boxing their ears.

V

TUESDAY, October 23.

Last night there was a still harder frost, which covered the ground in the courtyard with small white crystals. This we discover during our regular morning exploration of the galleries and dependencies of the palace.

The former lodgings of the begging missionaries and the schoolrooms are overflowing with packing boxes containing reserve supplies of silk and tea. There is also a heap of old bronzes, vases, and incense-burners piled up to the height of a man.

But the church itself is the most extraordinary mine,--a regular Ali Baba's cave, quite filled. In addition to antiquities brought from the Violet City, the Empress had put there all the presents she received two years ago for her Jubilee. (And the line of mandarins who on that occasion brought presents to their sovereign was a league long and lasted an entire day.)

In the nave and side aisles the boxes and cases are piled to half the height of the columns. In spite of the confusion, in spite of the hasty pillaging of those who have preceded us,--Chinese, Japanese, German, and Russian soldiers,--a marvellous collection remains. The most enormous of the chests,--those beneath,--protected by their weight and by the mass of things on top of them, have not even been opened. The first to go were the innumerable smaller articles on top, most of them enclosed in glass cases or in yellow silk coverings, such as bunches of artificial flowers in agate, jade, coral, or lapis lazuli, pagodas and blue landscapes made of the feathers of the kingfisher marvellously utilized. Works of Chinese patience which have cost years of toil are now broken in bits by the stroke of a bayonet, while the glass which protected them is crackling under one's feet on the floor.

Imperial robes of heavy silk brocaded with gold dragons lie on the ground among cases of every description. We walk over them, we walk over carved ivories, over pearls and embroideries galore. There are bronzes a thousand years old, from the Empress's collection; there are screens which seem to have been carved and embroidered by supernatural beings, there are antique vases, cloisonné, crackle ware, lacquers. Certain of the boxes underneath, bearing the names of emperors who died a century ago, contain presents sent them from distant provinces, which no one has ever taken the trouble to open. The sacristy of this astonishing cathedral contains in a series of pasteboard boxes, all the sumptuous costumes for the actors in the Empress's theatre, with many fashionable headdresses of former times.

This church, so full of pagan riches, has kept its organ intact, although it has been silent for thirty years. My comrade mounts with me to the gallery to try the effect of some hymns of Bach and Händel under these vaultings, while the African chasseurs, up to their knees in ivories, silks, and court costumes, continue their task of clearing things out below.

* * * * *

About ten o'clock this morning I cross over to the opposite side of the Violet City to visit the Palace of Ancestors, which is in charge of our marines. This was the Holy of Holies, the Pantheon of dead emperors, a temple which was never even approached.

It is in a particularly shady spot; in front of the entrance gate are light but ornate triumphal arches of green, red, and gold lacquer, resting on frail supports, and mingling with the sombre branches of the trees. Enormous cedars and cypresses, twisted by age, shelter the marble monsters which crouch at the threshold and have given them a greenish hue.

Passing the first enclosure, we naturally find a second. The courts, always shaded by old trees, succeed one another in solemn magnificence. They are paved with large stones, between which grows a weed common in cemeteries; each one of the cedars and cypresses which cast its shadow here is surrounded by a marble circle and seems to spring from a bed of carving. A thick layer of thousands of pine needles continually falling from the branches, covers everything. Gigantic incense-burners of dull bronze, centuries old, rest on pedestals bearing emblems of death.

Everything here has an unprecedented stamp of antiquity and mystery. It is a unique place, haunted by the ghosts of the Chinese emperors.

On each side are secondary temples, whose walls of lacquer and gold have taken on with time the shades of old Cordova leather. They contain broken catafalques, emblems and objects pertaining to certain funeral rites.

It is all incomprehensible and terrible; one feels profoundly incapable of grasping the meaning of these forms and symbols.

At length, in the last court on a white marble terrace guarded by bronze roes, the Ancestors' Palace lifts its tarnished gold façade, surmounted by a roof of yellow lacquer.

* * * * *

It consists of one immense room, grand and gloomy, all in faded gold turning to coppery red. At the rear is a row of nine mysterious double doors, which are sealed with wax. In the centre are the tables on which the repasts for the ancestral shades were placed, and where, on the day the Yellow City was taken, our hungry soldiers rejoiced to find an unexpected meal set forth. At each extremity of this lofty room chimes and stringed instruments await the hour, which may never come again, when they shall make music for the Shades. There are long, horizontal zithers, grave in tone, which are supported by golden monsters with closed eyes; gigantic chimes, one of bells, the others of marble slabs and jade, suspended by gold chains and surmounted by great fantastic beasts spreading their golden wings toward the dusky gold ceiling.

There are also lacquered cupboards as big as houses, containing collections of old paintings, rolled on ebony or ivory sticks, and wrapped in imperial silks.

Some of these are marvellous, and are a revelation of Chinese art of which we of the Occident have no conception,--an art at least equal to our own, though profoundly unlike it. Portraits of emperors in silent revery, or hunting in the forest, portray wild places which give one a longing for primitive nature, for the unspoiled world of rocks and trees. Portraits of dead empresses painted in water-colors on faded silks recall the candid grace of the Italian Primitives,--portraits so pale, so colorless, as to seem like fleeting reflections of persons, yet showing a perfection of modelling attained with absolute simplicity, and with a look of concentration in the eye that makes you feel the likeness and enables you for one strange moment to live face to face with these princesses of the past who have slept for centuries in this splendid mausoleum. All these paintings were sacred, never seen or even suspected to exist by Europeans.

Other rolls, which when spread out on the pavement are six or eight metres long, represent processions, receptions at court, or lines of ambassadors; cavaliers, armies, banners; men of all kinds by the thousands, whose dress, embroideries, and arms, suggest that one should look at them with a magnifying glass. The whole history of Chinese costume and ceremonial is contained in these precious miniatures. We even find here the reception, by I know not what emperor, of an ambassador from Louis XIV.; small persons with very French faces are represented as though for exhibition at Versailles, with wigs after the fashion of Roi-Soleil.

* * * * *

The nine magnificent sealed doors at the back of the temple, shut off the altars of nine emperors. They were good enough to break the red wax seals for me and to destroy the fastenings at one of the forbidden entrances, so that I might penetrate into one of the sacred sanctuaries,--that of the great Emperor Kouang-Lu, who was in his glory at the beginning of the eighteenth century. A serjeant has orders to accompany me in this profanation, holding in his hand a lighted candle, which seems to burn reluctantly here in the light cold air of the tomb. The temple itself was quite dark, but here it was black night itself, and it seemed as though dirt and cinders had been thrown about; the dust that accumulates so endlessly in Pekin seems a sign of death and decay. Passing from daylight, however dim, to the light of one small candle that is lost in the shadows, one sees confusedly at first, and there is a momentary hesitation, especially if the place is startling in itself. I see before me a staircase rising to a sort of tabernacle, which seems to be full of artistic creations of some unknown kind.

At both right and left, closed by complicated locks, are some severe chests which I am permitted to examine. In their compartments and in their double secret bottoms the sovereign's imperial seals have been concealed by the hundreds,--heavy seals of onyx, jade, or gold struck off for every occasion of his life and in commemoration of all the acts of his reign; priceless relics which no one dared touch after his obsequies, and which have lain there for twice one hundred years.

I go up into the tabernacle and the serjeant holds his candle before the marvels there,--jade sceptres and vases, some of a peculiar and exquisite workmanship in both dark and light jade, in cloisonné on gold, or in plain solid gold. Behind the altar in an obscure position a grand figure which I had not perceived followed me with an oblique look that reached me through two curtains of yellow imperial silk, whose folds were black with dust. It is a pale portrait of the defunct Emperor,--a life-sized portrait, so obscure, as seen by the light of our single wretched candle, as to seem like the reflection of a ghost in a tarnished mirror. What a nameless sacrilege would our opening the chests where his treasures were hidden seem to this dead man, nay, even our presence in this most impenetrable of all places in an impenetrable city!

When everything is carefully closed again, when the red seals have been put back in place and the pale image of the Emperor returned to silence, to its customary shadows, I hasten to get away from the tomblike chill, to breathe the air again, to seek on the terrace some of the autumn sunshine which filters through the cedar branches.