“Having been a Censor, I venture thus to memorialise the Throne. But as my present official position does not permit of my forwarding this direct, I request the high officials of my Board to present it for me. As my name did not figure originally in the list of officials to represent my Board at the ceremonies preparatory to His late Majesty’s burial, I begged the Grand Secretary Pao Yün to allow me to be included in the list. Pao Yün could not have foretold my suicide, so that no blame can attach to him for being my sponsor. Under our enlightened Dynasty, how could anyone imagine a return to the ancient and happily obsolete practice of being buried alive with one’s Sovereign? But my grief is too great and cannot be restrained; for to-day my Sovereign returns, dragon-borne, to Heaven, and all the world weeps with me in woe unutterable.
“I have respectfully but fully explained my feelings in this question of the lawful succession to the Throne, and now, under the title of your guilty servant, I present this my Memorial.”
X
TZŬ HSI BECOMES SOLE REGENT
The days of mourning for T’ung-Chih being done, his remains disposed of as auspiciously as the Court of Astronomers could desire, and his ghost placated, thanks to Wu K’o-tu, by solemn promises on the part of his mother to provide him with a suitable and legitimate heir in due season, life in the Forbidden City settled down once more into the old grooves under the joint Regency of the Empresses of the Eastern and Western Palaces.
But before long the new Emperor, a nervous and delicate boy, became, all unconsciously, a thorn in the side of the woman who put him on the Throne. As he passed from infancy to boyhood, it was a matter of common knowledge and report in the Palace that he showed a marked preference for the Empress Tzŭ An, who, by her kind and sympathetic treatment, had won the child’s heart. In the innocence of his lonely youth he frequented therefore the Eastern Palace, while Tzŭ Hsi, whose pride could brook no rivals, even in the heart of a child, was compelled to look on, and to realise that the forming of the future ruler’s mind was in the hands of another woman. There were not lacking those who told her that her colleague, secretly and with ulterior motives, encouraged the boy to oppose and displease her. Under these conditions, it was inevitable that the young Emperor should gradually become a cause of increasing jealousy and friction between the two women.
Interior of the I Kun Kung.
Tzŭ Hsi lived in these Apartments for some time after the death of T’ung-Chih.
Photo, Ogawa, Tokio.