This very morning the entire province had orders to leave off the winter head-dress and to put on the summer one,—a conical affair, resembling a lamp-shade, from which fall tufts of reddish horse-hair or peacock's or crow's feathers, according to the rank of the wearer. And since it is the style to wear them at dinner, hats of this description make grotesque figures of the guests.
As for the ladies of the house, they, alas, remain invisible, and it would be the worst possible breach of good form to ask for them or to refer to them in any way. It is well known that a Chinaman compelled to speak of his wife must refer to her in an indirect way, using, whenever possible, a qualifying term, devoid of all compliment, as, for example, "my offensive" or "my nauseating" wife.
The dinner begins with preserved prunellas and a great variety of dainty sweetmeats, which are eaten with little chop-sticks. The mandarin makes excuses for not offering me sea-swallows' nests, but Y-Tchou is so far from the coast that it is difficult to secure what one would like. But to make up for this lack, there is a dish of sharks' fins, another of the bladder of the sperm whale, another still of hinds' nerves, besides a ragout of water-lily roots with shrimps' eggs.
The inevitable odor of opium and musk mingled with the flavor of strange sauces pervades the room, which is white with a black ceiling. Its walls are decorated with water-colors on long strips of precious yellow paper, containing representations of animals or of huge flowers. A score of servants flock about us with the same sort of head-dress as their masters, and clad in beautiful silk gowns with velvet corselets. At my right my "confrère" of the Chinese Academy discourses to me of another world. He is old and quite withered-looking from the abuse of the fatal drug; his small face, shrivelled to a mere nothing, is obliterated by his conical hat and by his big blue goggles.
"Is it true," he inquires, "that the Middle Empire occupies the top of the territorial globe, and that Europe hangs on one side at an uncomfortable angle?"
It appears that he has at the ends of his fingers more than forty thousand characters in writing, and that he is able to improvise sweet poetry on any subject you may choose. From time to time I am aghast at the sight of his skeleton-like arm emerging from sleeves like pagodas, and stretching out toward some dish. His object is to secure with his own two-tined fork some choice morsel for me, which compels me to resort to perpetual and difficult jugglery in order not to have to eat the things.
After several preposterous light dishes, boned ducks appear, then a copious variety of viands succeed one another until the guests announce that they really have had enough. Then they bring opium pipes and cigarettes, and soon it is time to take a palanquin for the nocturnal festival they are arranging for me.
Outside, in the long avenue of porticoes, under the starry sky, all the servants of the Yamen await us with big paper lanterns, painted with bats and chimæras. A hundred friendly Boxers are also there, holding torches to light us better. Each of us gets into a palanquin, and the bearers trot off with us, while flaming torches run along beside us, and gongs, also running, begin the noise of battle at the head of our procession.
By the light of dancing torches we file rapidly past the open stalls, past the groups of natives assembled to watch us, past the grimacing monsters ranged along our route.
At the rear of an immense court stands a new building, where by the light of the torches we read the astonishing inscription, "Parisiana of Y-Tchou." "Parisiana" in this ultra-Chinese town, which until the previous autumn had never seen a European approach its walls! Our bearers stop there, and we find it is a theatre improvised this winter by our sixty soldiers to help pass away the glacial evenings.