I have no idea how to get out of this dead region, all new to me, where we have spent the day, and through the lonely labyrinthine streets of Pekin. I have as a guide a "mafou," who has been lent to me, and I only know that I have more than a mile to go before reaching my sumptuous, deserted quarters. My companions gone, I walk for a few moments in the silent old uninhabited streets before reaching one of the long, broad avenues where blue cotton dresses and long-queued yellow faces begin to appear. There is an interminable row of low houses, wretched, gray things, on either side of the street, where the tramp of horses raises the black friable dust in infectious clouds. The street is so wide and the houses so low that almost the whole of the twilight sky is visible above our heads; and so suddenly does the cold come on after sunset that in a moment we freeze. The crowds are dense about the food-shops, and the air is fetid in the neighborhood of the butchers, where dog-meat and roasted grasshoppers are sold. But what good nature in all these people of the streets, who on the day after battle and bombardment permit me to pass without so much as an evil look! What could I do, with my borrowed "mafou" and my revolver, if my appearance did not happen to please them? For a time after this we are alone in desolate, ruined quarters of the town. According to the position of the pale, setting sun, it seems to me that we are on the right track; but if my "mafou," who speaks nothing but Chinese, has not understood me, I shall be in a predicament. * * * * * The return journey in the cold seems interminable to me. At last, however, the artificial mountain of the imperial park is silhouetted in gray on the sky ahead of us, with the little faience kiosks and the twisted trees grouping themselves like scenes painted on lacquer. We reach one of the yellow enamelled gates of the blood-red wall surrounding the Imperial City, where two sentinels of the allied armies present arms. From here I know my way, I am at home; so I dismiss my guide and proceed alone to the Yellow City, from which at this hour no one is allowed to depart. The Imperial, the Yellow, the Forbidden City, encircled by its own terrible walls in the very heart of great Pekin, with its Babylonian environment, is a park rather than a city, a wood of venerable trees,--sombre cypresses and cedars,--several leagues in circumference. Some ancient temples peep through the branches, and several modern palaces built according to the fancies of the Empress regent. This great forest, to which I return to-night as if it were my home, has at no former period of history been known to foreigners; even ambassadors have never passed its gates; until recently it has been absolutely inaccessible and profoundly unknown to Europeans.