In this wood, twenty miles in circumference, lie the bodies of but four emperors; that of the Empress Regent, whose tomb was long since begun, will be added as well as her son's, the young Emperor, who has had his chosen place marked with a stele of gray marble.[4] And that is all. Other sovereigns, past or to be, sleep, or will sleep, elsewhere, in other Edens, as vast and as wonderfully arranged. Immense space is required for the body of a Son of Heaven, and immense solitary silence must reign round about it. The arrangement of these tombs is regulated by unchangeable plans, which date back to old extinguished dynasties. They are all alike, recalling those of the Ming emperors, which antedate them by several centuries, and whose ruins have been for a long time the object of one of the excursions permitted to European travellers. One invariably approaches by a cut in the sombre forest, half a mile in length, which has been so planned by the artists of the past that it opens, like the doors of a magnificent stage-setting, upon some incomparable background such as a particularly high mountain, abrupt and bold, or a mass of rock presenting one of those anomalies of form and color that the Chinese everywhere seek. Invariably, also, the avenue begins with great triumphal arches of white marble, which are, needless to say, surmounted by monsters bristling with horns and claws. In the case of the ancestor of the present Emperor, who receives to-day our first visit, these entrance arches appear unexpectedly in the heart of the forest, their bases entangled with wild bindweed. They seem to have shot up, at the rubbing of an enchanter's magic ring, out of what appears to be virgin soil, so covered is it with moss and with the rare delicate little plants which nothing disturbs, and which grow only in places that have long been quiet and respected by man. Next come some marble bridges with semicircular arches; there are three bridges exactly alike, for each time an emperor passes, dead or alive, the middle bridge is reserved for him alone. The architects of the tombs were careful to have the avenue crossed several times by artificial streams, in order to have an occasion for spanning them with these charming curves of everlasting white. On each rail of the bridge there is an intertwining of imperial fancies. The sloping pavement is white and slippery, and completely framed in grass, which pushes through and flourishes in all its joinings. The crossing is dangerously slippery for our horses, whose steps resound mournfully on the marble; the sudden noise we make in the stillness is almost a source of embarrassment to us, making us feel as though our coming had disturbed in an unseemly manner the composure of the necropolis. With the exception of ourselves and a few ravens in the trees, nothing moves and nothing lives in all the immensity of this memorial park.