As this evening marks the last chapter of our imperial phantasmagoria, we sit up later than usual. For this once we are childish enough to array ourselves in sumptuous Asiatic garments, then we throw ourselves down on the cushions and call opium--so favorable to weary and blasé imaginations such as ours have unfortunately begun to be--to our aid. Alas! to be alone in this palace would have seemed magical enough to us a few years ago without the aid of any avatar. The opium, needless to say, is of exquisite quality; its fumes, rising in rapid little spirals, soon make the air sweet and heavy. It quickly brings to us the ecstasy, the forgetfulness, the relief, the youthful lightness so dear to the Chinese. * * * * * There is absolute silence without; absolute silence and deserted courts, where all is cold and black. The gallery grows warm, the heat of the furnace is heavy, for these walls of glass and paper, so frail as a protection against surprises from without, form rooms almost hermetically sealed and propitious to the intoxication that comes from perfumes. Stretched out upon the silken cushions, we gaze at the receding ceiling, at the row of arches so elaborately carved into lacework, from which the lanterns with the dangling pearls are suspended. Chimæras of gold stand out from the thick folds of the green or yellow silks. High screens of cloisonné, lacquer, or ebony, the great luxury of China, shut off the corners, forming luxurious nooks filled with jars, bronzes, and monsters with eyes of jade,--eyes which squintingly follow you. Absolute silence, except that from a distance one of those shots is heard which never fails to mark the torpor of the night, or a cry of distress or alarm; skirmishes between Europeans in the posts and thieving Chinamen; sentinels afraid of the dead or of the night shooting at a shadow. In the foreground, which is lighted by one lamp, the only luminous things whose design and color are engraved upon our already fixed gaze are four gigantic incense-burners--hieratic in form, and made of an adorable blue cloisonné--resting on gold elephants. They stand out against a background of black lacquer traversed by flying birds, whose plumage is made of different kinds of mother-of-pearl. No doubt our lamp is going out, for, with the exception of these nearer things, we scarcely see the magnificence of the place until the outline of some rare vase five hundred years old, the reflection of a piece of inimitable silk, or the brilliancy of some bit of enamel recalls it to our memory. * * * * *