Chinese style. The repast
being over--towards the second watch--we lay ourselves on beds that are
too narrow in rooms with little comfort, and sleep not the sleep of the
just, but the sleep of the exhausted--and that is just as good.

I did not wake before ten o'clock, and I might have slept all the
morning if the thought had not occurred to me that I had a duty to
fulfil. And what a duty! To call in the Avenue Cha Coua before the
delivery of the unhappy case to Mademoiselle Zinca Klork.

I arise. Ah! If Kinko had not succumbed, I should have returned to the
railway station--I should have assisted, as I had promised, in the
unloading of the precious package. I would have watched it on to the
cart, and I would have accompanied it to the Avenue Cha Coua, I would
even have helped in carrying him up to Mademoiselle Zinca Klork! And
what a double explosion of joy there would have been when Kinko jumped
through the panel to fall into the arms of the fair Roumanian!

But no! When the box arrives it will be empty--empty as a heart from
which all the blood has escaped.

I leave the Hotel of _Ten Thousand Dreams_ about eleven o'clock, I call
one of those Chinese carriages, which look like palanquins on wheels, I
give the address of Mademoiselle Klork, and I am on the way.

You know, that among the eighteen provinces of China Petchili occupies
the most northerly position. Formed of nine departments, it has for its
capital Pekin, otherwise known as Chim-Kin-Fo, an appellation which
means a "town of the first order, obedient to Heaven."

I do not know if this town is really obedient to Heaven, but it is
obedient to the laws of rectilineal geometry. There are four towns,
square or rectangular, one within the other. The Chinese town, which
contains the Tartar town, which contains the yellow town, or Houng
Tching, which contains the Red Town, or Tsen-Kai-Tching, that is to
say, "the forbidden town." And within this symmetrical circuit of six
leagues there are more than two millions of those inhabitants, Tartars
or Chinese, who are called the Germans of the East, without mentioning
several thousands of Mongols and Tibetans. That there is much bustle in
the streets, I can see by the obstacles my vehicle encounters at every
step, itinerating peddlers, carts heavily laden, mandarins and their
noisy following. I say nothing of those abominable wandering dogs, half
jackals, half wolves, hairless and mangy, with deceitful eyes,
threaten