My comrade, Captain C., who has taken possession of the place, leads me with a lantern and a few followers to the apartment set aside for me. It is on the _rez-de-chausée_, of course; there are no real stories in Chinese houses. As in the gallery, from which we come, there is nothing between me and the night outside but a few panes of glass, very light shades of white silk, and windows of rice-paper torn from one end to the other. As to the door, which is made of one great pane of glass, I fasten it with a cord, since there is no lock. There are some admirable yellow rugs on the floor, thick as cushions. I have a big imperial bed of carved ebony, and my mattress and pillows are covered with precious silk embroidered in gold, but there are no sheets, although I have a soldier's gray woollen blanket. * * * * * To-morrow my companion tells me I may go and select from her Majesty's reserve supply whatever I wish in the way of further decorations for this room, as it can do no one any harm to move things about. Assuring me that the gates of the outer enclosure, as well as the breach by which I entered, are guarded by sentinels, he retires with his orderlies to the other end of the palace. Dressed, and with my boots on, I stretch myself out on the beautiful silk cushions, adding to my gray blanket an old sheepskin and two or three imperial robes embroidered with gold chimæras. My two servants arrange themselves in like manner on the floor. Before blowing out the red candle from some ancestral altar, I am constrained to admit in my secret soul that the accusation that we are "Occidental barbarians" has been completely confirmed since supper. The wind has tormented and torn all that was left of the rice-paper in my panes; above me there is a perpetual sound like the movement of the wings of nocturnal birds or the flight of bats. I distinguish occasionally, although half asleep, a short fusillade or an isolated cry in the distance. II SUNDAY, October 21. Cold, darkness, death, all that oppressed us last night, has disappeared with the morning light. The sun shines warm as a summer sun. The somewhat disordered Chinese magnificence which surrounds us is bright with the light of the East. It is amusing to go on a voyage of discovery over this almost hidden palace, which lurks in a low spot, behind walls, under trees, looking quite insignificant as you approach it, but is, together with its dependencies, almost as large as a city. It is made up of long galleries enclosed on all sides in glass; the light framework, the verandahs, the small columns, are painted on the outside a greenish bronze decorated with pink water-lilies. One has the feeling that it was built according to the fancies of a woman; it even seems as though the splendid old Empress had left in it, along with her bibelots, a touch of her superannuated yet still charming grace.