The exit from the church was accomplished quietly, with every appearance of peace and happiness, in complete confidence in these surroundings so recently the scene of massacre and other horrors. The gates of the enclosure are wide open, and a new avenue, bordered by young trees, has been laid out over what was not long since a charnel-house.
A great number of little Chinese carts, upholstered in beautiful silk or in blue cotton, are waiting, their heavy wheels decorated with copper; all the dolls get in with much ceremony, and depart as though they were leaving some festive performance.
Once more the Christians in China have won a victory, and they triumph generously—until the next massacre.
At two o'clock to-day, as is the Sunday custom, the marine band plays in the court at headquarters,—in the court of the Palace of the North, which I had known filled with strange and magnificent débris in a cold autumn wind, but which at present is all cleared up as neat as a pin, with the April green beginning to show on the branches of the little trees.
This semblance of a French Sunday is rather sad. The feeling of exile which one never loses here is made all the keener by the poor music, to which there are but few listeners; no dressy women or happy babies, just two or three groups of idle soldiers and a few of the sick or wounded from the hospital, their young faces pale and wan, one dragging a limb, another leaning on a crutch.
And yet there are moments when it does suggest home; the going and coming of the marines and of the good Sisters reminds one of some little corner of France; beyond the glass galleries which surround this court rises the slender Gothic tower of the neighboring church, with a large tricolored flag floating from the top, high up in the blue sky, dominating everything, and protecting the little country we have improvised here in the haunts of the Chinese emperors.
What a change has taken place in this Palace of the North since my stay here last autumn.