When the first condemned man came out he plunged the dirk into his stomach with such force that his entrails protruded; he held them up in his hand and began singing verses of hatred and revenge against the detested foreigners who were polluting the sacred soil of the Land of the Gods till death stopped his ghastly song. Those who came after him followed his example, and the whole spectacle was so gruesome that when eleven men had died—this being the number of the murdered victims—the Frenchmen could hold out no longer, and Captain du Petit Thouars prayed that the remaining nine men might be spared. His account of the scene to me was blood-curdling. Brave man as he was—one of the bravest—it nearly made him sick only to think of it, and his voice faltered as with difficulty he told the tale. CHAPTER XXIII JAPAN. THE MIKADO On the 18th Yamashina no Miya, first cousin once removed of the Mikado, who had arrived at Hiōgo the previous day to invite the Foreign Ministers to an audience of the Emperor at Kiōto, called upon Sir Harry. The Prince was robed in the old court dress of a purple colour with the curious cap (_yéboshi_) of wrinkled black paper. His teeth were blackened, but as that process has to be renewed every two, or at most three, days, and as they were at that moment in a transition stage, they did not look their best. When we saw him again a few days later they had been newly polished up, and shone like patent leather. We reached Kiōto on the 21st and were lodged in the magnificent temple called Chi-on-in, lying in a grove at the foot of the beautiful Higashiyama, “the eastern hill.” Everything had been done to insure our comfort, and the temple was guarded by troops of the Awa, Higo and Owari clans. Our rooms were really of royal magnificence, and we were treated to a feast of innumerable dainties set out with an elaborate etiquette that would have satisfied the great Yoshimasa,[7] the Lucullus of Japan, himself. It would be difficult to forget the lovely temple with its avenues of huge cherry trees, its vast halls, its art treasures, and its great solemn bell rolling out deep, musical waves of sound far away over the city; but I saw it again in 1906, quite unchanged, quite untouched by political upheavals, and had the chance to talk over the story of forty years gone by with the stately and venerable abbot, who remembered the cruel days when the great State apartments were turned for the nonce into hospital wards.