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.