As to my own small personal expedition, which in comparison with his appears so easy and unimportant, the general kindly concerned himself with what we were to drink _en route_, my servant and I, in this time of infection, when the water is a constant danger on account of human remains, thrown there by the Chinese, left lying in all the wells; and he made me a present of untold value,--a case of eau d'Evian. II THE TWO GODDESSES OF THE BOXERS SUNDAY, October 14. An old Chinese woman, wrinkled as a winter apple, timidly opens the door at which we have loudly knocked. It stands in the deep shadow of a narrow passageway exhaling unhealthy fetid smells, between walls blackened by filth, where one feels as shut in as in the heart of a prison. The old woman, an enigmatical figure, looks us all over with a blank impenetrable gaze; then recognizing among us the chief of the international police, she silently steps aside and permits us to enter. We follow her into a dark little court. Poor late autumn flowers are growing in the old walls, and we breathe faint sickly odors. We are a group of officers, three French, two English, and one Russian, who are there clearly by right of conquest. Our conductor is a strange creature, balancing on the tips of her incredibly small feet. Her gray hair fastened with long pins is so tightly drawn back that it seems to raise her eyes unduly. Her dark dress is indefinite in color, but her parchment-like face bears to a high degree that something appertaining to a worn-out race, which we are wont to call distinction. She appears to be only a servant, yet her aspect, her carriage, are disconcerting; some mystery broods over her, she seems like a refined matron who has resorted to a shameful clandestine occupation. This whole place, moreover, is difficult to describe to those who do not know it. Beyond the court is a sordid vestibule, then a door painted black, with a Chinese inscription consisting of two big red letters. Without knocking, the old woman draws the bolt and opens it. We may be mistaken, but we have come in all good faith to pay a visit to _two goddesses_,--prisoners kept shut up in this palace. For here we are in the common, the lower dependencies, the secret places of the palace of the viceroy of Petchili, and to reach this spot we have had to pass over the immense desolation of a town with cyclopean walls which is at present only a mass of débris and dead bodies.