"'Oh,' she exclaims, 'ye old emperors of the ancient dynasties, if any of your seers could but have told you that one day the barbarians of the remote West, whose despised name had scarcely reached your ears, would come to disturb the peace of your manes with the clinking of their glasses and the report of their champagne corks!'... But at length the keys are turned in the rusty locks, the guardian of the first enclosure offers us tea, and we distribute some money among the attendants.... In China, perhaps more even than in Europe, this is an inevitable formula: the famous principle of _nothing for nothing_ must have been invented in the Celestial Empire. Out of respect, or for some other reason, the guardians left us free to go and come at will, dispensing with the labour of following us. At first we traversed a spacious square court, paved with white marble, planted with yews and cypresses, cut into shapes as at Versailles, and peopled with an infinite number of statues; then we climbed a superb marble staircase of thirty steps, which led to another square court, planted in the same style, and shut in on the right and left by a thick forest of huge cedars, which conceals eight temples with circular cupolas, crowned and ornamented by the grimacing gods of the Chinese Trinity, with their six arms and six heads. Now another staircase, leading to a circular platform in white marble, in the middle of which rises the grand mausoleum. It is of marble; a great bronze door admits to the interior. We pass under a vault, the niches of which enclose the bones of the Ming emperors; a spiral staircase, with sculptured balustrades, very handsome in style, conducts to a second platform, elevated some seventy feet above the ground. The view from it is magnificent, overlooking a world of mausoleums, pagodas, temples, and kiosks, which the great trees had concealed from us. "The mausoleum is continued into an immense cupola, and terminates in a pointed pyramid, covered with plates and mythological bas-reliefs. Finally, the pyramid is crowned by a great gilded ball." The travellers here quitted their English horses, and mounted the frightful Chinese steeds which carry on the postal service. After a couple of wearisome days, occupied in clearing narrow defiles, torrents, and plains of blinding dust, they reached the Lazarist Mission.