Friday, April 19.
The railway destroyed by the Boxers has been rebuilt, and the train which I take this morning goes straight to Pekin, arriving there about four o'clock this afternoon,—a rapid and commonplace journey, very different from the one I made at the beginning of winter by junk and on horseback.
The spring rains have not begun; the chill verdure of May, the sorghos and the young willows, later than they are in our climate, emerge with great difficulty from the dry soil and cast a hesitating shadow upon the Chinese plains, powdered with gray dust and burned by an already torrid sun.
And how different is the appearance of Pekin! The first time we approached it, not by the superhuman ramparts of the Tartar City, but by those of the Chinese City, less imposing and less sombre.
To my surprise the train passes right through a fresh breach in the wall, enters the heart of the town, and lands one at the door of the Temple of Heaven. It seems that it is the same with the line from Pao-Ting-Fou; the Babylonian enclosure has been pierced, and the railroad enters Pekin and comes to an end only at the imperial quarters. What unheard-of changes the Celestial Emperor will find if he ever returns!—locomotives whistling and running right through this old capital of stability and decay.
On the platform of the temporary station there was an almost joyous animation, and many Europeans, too, were on hand to meet the incoming travellers.
Among the numerous officers who were there is one whom I recognize, although I never have seen him, and toward whom I advance spontaneously,—Colonel Marchand, the well-known hero, who arrived in Pekin last November, after I had left. We take a carriage together bound for the French quarter, where I am to be entertained.
The general quarters are a league away, still in the small Palace of the North, which was known to me in its Chinese splendor, and of whose earlier transformations I was a witness. The colonel himself lives near by in the Rotunda Palace, and we discover in the course of conversation that he has chosen for his private dwelling the same kiosk which I used for my work-room last season.
We make the trip by way of the grand avenue used by processions and emperors, through the triple gates in the colossal red walls under the murderous dungeon; over the marble bridges between great grinning marble lions, and between ivory-colored obelisks surmounted by animals out of dreamland.
And when, after the jolting, the noise, and the crowds, our carriage glides at last over the large paving-stones of the Yellow City, all this magnificence seems to me, on second sight, more than ever condemned,—a thing which has had its day. Imperial Pekin, in its everlasting dust, is now warmed by the rays of the April sun, yet it does not waken, does not return to life after its long, cold winter. Not a drop of rain has fallen yet, the ground is dust, the parks are dust.