(FROM THE FRENCH OF MERY.)
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I, the Doctor Sian Seng to Tching-bit-ha-ki.
On receipt of this letter forthwith go to Houang-xa, to the yellow temple of Fo, and burn upon the altar a stick of camphor for me, for I have arrived safely at Paris. I have sailed five thousand three hundred and twenty leagues since my embarkation at Hoang-Ho, with peril of life beneath my feet the whole voyage—and Providence has protected me.
May my ancestors deign to watch over me more than ever at this moment! Paris is a field of battle, where bullets are represented by wheels and horses; those who have neither carriage nor horses, perish miserably in the flower of their age. There are seventeen hospitals for the wounded; I saw one yesterday with this inscription, in large letters, “Hospital for Incurables.” The wounded who are carried there, know when they enter that they will never come out alive—they know their fate! It is very charitable on the part of the doctors. You can now see that the Barbarians understand civilization!
Notwithstanding the sage precepts of Li-ki, and the law of Menu, I have purchased a carriage on four wheels, drawn by horses, and have wept in anticipation of the unhappy fate of those I am about to send to the “Hospital for Incurables;” but there are but two modes of living in Paris—you must crush others, or be crushed yourself. I think it most prudent to do the first.
I went down to the river to make my ablutions, and was about to commence this holy act, when a policeman threatened me with his baton. In looking at the water, I was consoled for the deprivation, as it had not the pure and limpid flow of our own Yu-ho, which runs by Pekin under the marble bridge of Pekiao. The Seine is a dirty yellow stream, which descends to the ocean for a bath. I shall wait until it comes back!
I was told that Christians take a bath at home, which costs two francs. I called for one, and was furnished with an iron box, very much resembling the coffins in the cemetery of Ming-tang-y; one gets into them and lies upon the back, with the hands crossed upon the breast, like a true believer who has died in the faith of Fo.
In Paris, each house is governed by a tyrant, who is called a porter. There are twenty thousand porters here, who make a million of inhabitants unhappy and desolate. They sometimes make a Revolution to overturn a poor devil, called a king; but they have never overturned the twenty thousand porters. Mine receives my orders with loud explosions of laughter, and when I threaten him, he says to me, “You are a Chinaman!” Since he thinks to insult me by calling me by the name of my country, I make the matter equal by crying, “And you are a Frenchman!”