The galleries cross one another at right angles, forming courts at the junctures, like little cloisters. They are filled with objects of art, which can be equally well seen from without, for the entire palace is transparent from one end to the other. There is nothing to protect all this glass even at night; the place was enclosed by so many walls and seemed so inviolable that no other precaution was deemed necessary. Within, the architectural elegance consists of arches of rare wood, crossing at frequent intervals; they are made of enormous beams so carved, so leafy, so open, that they seem like lace, or, rather, like bowers of dark leaves that form a perspective comparable to the lanes in old parks. * * * * * The wing which we occupy must have been the wing of honor. The farther away from it one goes in the direction of the woods where the palace ends, the more simple does the decoration become. At one end are the lodgings of the mandarins, the stewards, the gardeners, the domestics, all hurriedly abandoned and full of unfamiliar objects, household utensils or those used in worship, ceremonial hats and court liveries. Then comes an enclosed garden which is entered by an elaborately carved marble gate. Here one finds small fountains, pretentious and curious rockwork, and rows of vases containing plants which have died from lack of water or from cold. Further on there is an orchard where figs, grapes, eggplant, pumpkins, and gourds were cultivated,--gourds especially, for in China they are emblems of happiness, and it was the custom of the Empress to offer one with her own white hands to each of the dignitaries who came to pay his court to her in exchange for the magnificent presents he brought her. There are also small pavilions for the cultivation of silkworms and little kiosks for storing edible grains; each kind was kept in a porcelain jar decorated with imperial dragons, worthy of a place in a museum. The parks of this artificial little landscape end in the brush, where they lose themselves under the leafless trees of the wood where to-day the crows and the magpies are enjoying the beautiful autumn sun. It seems that when the Empress gave up the regency--and we know by what an audacious manoeuvre she so quickly managed to take it up again--it was her caprice to construct a bit of the country here in the heart of Pekin, in the very centre of this immense human ant-hill.