On the broad highway where one treads as upon ashes, there is a dull rumbling of caravans and horses. The stupendous Mongolian camels, brown and woolly, attached to one another in long endless files, pass slowly and solemnly along, unceasingly like the waters of a river, raising as they walk the powdery bed which stifles the sounds of this entire city. They are going, who knows where, into the depths of the Thibetan or Mongolian deserts, carrying in the same indefatigable and unconscious way thousands of bales of merchandise; taking the place of canals and rivers which convey barges and junks over immense distances. So heavy is the dust raised by their feet that they can scarcely lift them; the legs of these innumerable camels in procession, as well as the lower parts of the houses, and the garments of the passers-by, are all vague and confused in outline, as though seen through the thick smoke of a forge, or through a shower of dark wool; but the backs of the great beasts with their shaggy coats, emerging from the soft clouds near the earth, are almost sharply defined, and the gold of the façades, tarnished below, shines brightly at the height of the extravagant cornices. It seems like a phantasmagoric city with no real foundations, resting upon a cloud, a heavy cloud, whereon gigantic sheep, with necks enlarged by a thick brown fleece, move inoffensively. Above the dust the sun shines clear and white, making resplendent the cold, penetrating light in which things stand out incisively. Objects that are high up above the ground stand out with absolute clearness. The smallest of small monsters on the top of the triumphal arches may be clearly seen, as well as the most delicate carving on the summits of the stele; one can even count the teeth, the forked tongues, the squinting eyes of the hundreds of gold chimæras which jut from the roofs. Pekin, the city of carvings and gildings, the city of claws and horns, is still capable of creating illusions; on dry, sunny, windy days it recovers something of its splendor under the dust of the steppes, under the veil which then masks the shabbiness of its streets and the squalor of its crowds. Yet all is old and worn in spite of the gilding which still remains bright. In this quarter there was continual fighting during the siege of the legations, the Boxers destroying the homes of those whom they suspected of sympathy for the barbarians. The long avenue which we have been following for half an hour ends now at an arched bridge of white marble, still a superb object; here the houses come to an end, and on the opposite bank the gloomy steppes begin. This was the Bridge of the Beggars,--dangerous inhabitants, who, before the capture of Pekin, ranged themselves on both sides of its long railing and extorted money from the passers-by; they formed a bold corporation with a king at its head, who often went armed. Their place is unoccupied to-day; the vagrants departed after the battles and massacres began.