Our horses' hoofs sink deeper and deeper, disappear, in fact, in the coal-black dust, which is blinding and all-pervading, in the atmosphere as well as on the ground, in spite of the light rain and the snowflakes which make our faces tingle. Noiselessly, as though we were stepping upon wadding or felt, we pass under the enormous vaults and enter the land of ruin and ashes. A few slatternly beggars shivering in corners in their blue rags, a few corpse-eating dogs, like those whose acquaintance we have already made _en route_,--and that is all. Silence and solitude within as well as without these walls. Nothing but rubbish and ruin, ruin. The land of rubbish and ashes, and little gray bricks,--little bricks all alike, scattered in countless myriads upon the sites of houses that have been destroyed, or upon the pavement of what once were streets. Little gray bricks,--this is the sole material of which Pekin was built; a city of small, low houses decorated with a lacework of gilded wood; a city of which only a mass of curious débris is left, after fire and shell have crumbled away its flimsy materials. We have come into the city at one of the corners where there was the fiercest fighting,--the Tartar quarter, which contained the European legations. Long straight streets may still be traced in this infinite labyrinth of ruins; ahead of us all is gray or black; to the sombre gray of the fallen brick is added the monotonous tone which follows a fire,--the gloom of ashes and the gloom of coal. Sometimes in crossing the road they form obstacles,--these tiresome little bricks; these are the remains of barricades where fighting must have taken place. After a few hundred metres we enter the street of the legations, upon which for so many months the anxious attention of the whole world was fixed. Everything is in ruins, of course; yet European flags float on every piece of wall, and we suddenly find, as we come out of the smaller streets, the same animation as at Tien-Tsin,--a continual coming and going of officers and soldiers, and an astonishing array of uniforms. A big flag marks the entrance to what was our legation, two monsters in white marble crouch at the threshold; this is the etiquette for all Chinese palaces. Two of our soldiers guard the door which I enter, my thoughts recurring to the heroes who defended it. * * * * *