Indiscreet Letters From Peking | Page 4

greet each other daily with the salutation, "La situation politique est tres grave," and laugh at the good words. But it is grave notwithstanding the laughter. Once in 1899, after the Empress Dowager's _coup d'etat_ and the virtual imprisonment of the Emperor, Legation Guards had to be sent for, a few files for each of the Legations that possess squadrons in the Far East, and, what is more, these guards had to stay for a good many months. The guards are now no more, but it is curious that the men they came mainly to protect us against--Tung Fu-hsiang's Mohammedan braves from the savage back province of Kansu who love the reactionary Empress Dowager--are still encamped near the Northern capital.
The old Peking society has therefore vanished, and in its place are highly suspicious and hostile Legations--Legations petty in their conceptions of men and things--Legations bitterly disliking one another--in fact, Legations richly deserving all they get, some of the cynics say.
The Peking air, as I have already said, is highly electrical and unpleasant in these hot spring days with the dust rising in heavy clouds. Squabbling and cantankerous, rather absurd and petty, the Legations are spinning their little threads, each one hedged in by high walls in its own compound and by the debatable question of the situation politique.
Outside and around us roars the noise of the Tartar city. At night the noise ceases, for the inner and outer cities are closed to one another by great gates; but at midnight the gates are opened by sleepy Manchu guards for a brief ten minutes, so that gorgeous red and blue-trapped carts, drawn by sleek mules, may speed into the Imperial City for the Daybreak Audience with the Throne. These conveyances contain the high officials of the Empire. It has been noticed by a Legation stroller on the Wall--the Tartar Wall--that the number of carts passing in at midnight is far greater than usual; that the guards of the city gates now and again stop and question a driver. It is nothing.
Meanwhile the dust rises in clouds. It is very dry this year--that is all.

II
MUTTERINGS
24th May, 1900.
* * * * *
We are beginning to call them Boxers--grudgingly and sometimes harking back and giving them their full name, "Society of Harmonious Fists," or the "Righteous Harmony Fist Society"; but still a beginning has been made, and they are becoming Boxers by the inevitable process of shortening which distinguishes speech.
have been talking about them a good deal to-day, these Boxers, since it has been the birthday of her most excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, and the British Legation has been en fete. Her Majesty's Minister, in fine, has been entertaining us in the vast and princely gardens of the British Legation at his own expense. Weird Chinese lanterns have been lighted in the evening and slung around the grounds; champagne has been flowing with what effervescence it could muster; the eleven Legations and the nondescripts have forgotten their cares for a brief space and have been enjoying the evening air and the music of Sir R---- H----'s Chinese band. Looking at lighted lanterns, drinking champagne cup, listening to a Chinese band--where the devil is the protocol and the political situation, you will say? Not quite forgotten, since the French Minister attracted the attention of many all the evening by his vehement manner. I pushed up once, too, and with a polite bow listened to what he was saying. Ah, the old words, the eternal words, the political situation, or the situation politique, whichever way you like to use them. But still you listen a bit, for it is droll to hear the yet unaccustomed word Boxers in French. "Les Boxeurs," he says; and what the French Minister says is always worth listening to, since he has the best Intelligence corps in the world--the Catholic priests of China--at his disposal.
Curiously enough, he was speaking of the arch-priest of priests, renowned above all others in this Peking world, Monseigneur F----, Vicar Apostolic of the Manchu capital--almost Vicar of God to countless thousands of dark-yellow converts. It is Monseigneur F----'s letter of the 19th May, written but five days ago, and already locally famous through leakage, which was the subject-matter of his impromptu oration. Monseigneur F---- wrote and demanded a guard of marines for his cathedral, his people and his chattels--quarante ou cinquante marins pour proteger nos personnes et nos biens, were his exact words, and his request has been cruelly refused by the Council of Ministers on the ground that it is absurd. The Vicar Apostolic, however, gave his grounds for making such a demand calmly and logically--depicted the damage already done by an anti-foreign and revolutionary movement in the districts not a thousand miles from Peking, and solemnly forecasted what was soon to happen....
The French Minister