Something like approaching thunder is heard in the distance, which proves to be the noise of about fifty tambourines announcing the arrival of the procession. It was to form at the Yellow Gate, so as to follow the line of the new avenue, and to disband at the foot of the Rotunda Palace. The lights of the first division appear at the entrance of the Marble Bridge, and begin to cross its magnificent white archway. Cavalry, infantry, and music, all seem to be rolling on in our direction, with enough noise from the brasses and the tambourines to make the sepulchral walls of the Violet City tremble, while above the heads of the thousands of soldiers groups and rows of extravagantly Chinese colored lanterns are swinging to the movement of the horses' hoofs or to the rhythm of human shoulders.
The troops have passed, but the procession is not nearly over. A sharp, delirious noise that gets on one's nerves follows the marches played by our musicians,—the noise of gongs, zithers, cymbals, bells. At the same time gigantic green and yellow banners, curiously slashed and of unusual proportions, begin to appear on the Marble Bridge, borne by an advancing company of tall, slender persons, with astonishing underpinnings, who are swinging along like bears. They prove to be my stilt-walkers from Y-Tchou and from Laï-Chou-Chien from the vicinity of the tombs, who have taken a three or four days' journey in order to participate in this French fête!
Behind them a crescendo of gongs, cymbals, and other diabolical Chinese instruments, announces the arrival of the dragons,—red and green beasts twenty metres long. In some way or other they are lighted from within, which by night gives them an incandescent appearance; above the heads of the crowds they twist and undulate like the sulphurescent serpents in a Buddhist hell. The entire scene reflected in the water—the outline of palace and pagoda with their multiple roofs—is emphasized by lines of red lights that shine brightly this moonless and cloudy night.
When the big serpents have gone past, the Marble Bridge continues to pour at our feet a stream of humanity, although an irregular one, which moves tumultuously along with a formidable noise. It is the rest of our troops, the free soldiers following the procession with lanterns, also singing the "Marseillaise," or the "Sambre-et-Meuse," at the top of their lungs. Along with them are German soldiers arm-in-arm with them, increasing the volume of sound by adding their voices to the others, and singing with all their might the old French songs.
Midnight. The myriads of little red lanterns on the cornices of the old palace and pagodas have burned themselves out. Obscurity and the usual silence have come back to the lake and to the imperial woods. The Chinese princes have discreetly withdrawn, followed by their silk-robed attendants, and have been borne far away in their palanquins to their own dwellings in another part of the shadowy city.
It is now time for the cotillon, after a ball that was necessarily short,—a ball that seemed an impossibility, for there were scarcely a dozen dancing women, even including a pretty little twelve-year-old girl and her governess, to five hundred dancing men. It took place in the beautiful gilt pagoda, converted for the night into a ball-room; the dancers occupied the centre of the great empty space beneath the downcast gaze of the big alabaster goddess in the golden robes, who was my companion of last summer in the solitude of this same palace, together with a certain yellow and white cat. Poor goddess! A bed of natural iris has been arranged for the evening at her feet, and the injured background of her altar draped in blue satin, against the magnificent folds of which her figure stands out in ideal whiteness; her golden dress, embroidered with sparkling stones, shows to great advantage.
In spite of all effort to light this sanctuary and to decorate it with lanterns in the form of flowers and birds, it is too freakish a place for a ball-room. It is impossible to light up the corners and the gilded arches of the ceiling, and the presiding goddess is so mysteriously pale as to be embarrassing with that smile of hers, which seems to pity the puerility of our Occidental hopping and skipping; her eyes are downcast, that she may not see. This feeling of embarrassment is not peculiar to myself, for the young woman who is leading the cotillon, seized by some sudden fancy, leaves the room, taking with her the tambourine she is using in the figure that has just begun, and is followed by both dancers and onlookers, so that the temple is emptied, and our poor little cotillon, languidly continued for a time in the open air, comes to an end under the cedars of the esplanade, where a few lanterns are still burning.
One o'clock in the morning. Most of the guests have departed, having far to go in the darkness before reaching their dwellings. A few of the particularly faithful among the "Allies" remain, it is true, around the buffet where the champagne continues to flow, and the toasts to France grow warmer and warmer.