his august aunt. Nor was this all, for often the
rescinding edicts appeared under his own name, and by the New Year,
when he was brought forth to receive the foreign ministers accredited
to his court, scarcely anything remained of all his reforms but the
Peking University and the provincial and other schools. It is not to be
wondered at therefore that he was reticent and despondent. What
promises of good behaviour it was necessary for him to make before he
was even allowed this much liberty, it is useless for us to conjecture.

Following this audience the Empress Dowager, who up to this time had
been seen by no foreigner except Prince Henry of Prussia, decided to
receive the wives of the foreign ministers. Her motives for this new
move it is impossible to determine. It may have been to ascertain how
the foreign governments would treat her who had been reported to have
calmly ousted "their great and good friend the Emperor," to whom their
ministers were accredited. Or it may have been that she hoped by this
stroke of diplomacy to gain some measure of recognition as head of the
government. She would at least see how she was regarded.

The audience was an unqualified success. The seven ladies received were
charmed by the gracious manner of their imperial hostess, who assured
them each as she touched her lips to the tea which she presented to
them that "we are all one family," and up to that period of her life
there was nothing to indicate that she did not feel that the sentiment
she expressed was true. Up to the time of the coup d'etat, as Dr.
Martin says, "she herself was noted for progressive ideas." "It will
not be denied by any one," says Colonel Denby, "that the improvement
and progress" described in his first volume, "are mainly due to the
will and power of the Empress Regent. To her own people, up to this
period in her career, she was kind and merciful, and to foreigners she
was just." From the time of her return to the capital after their
flight in 1900 till the time of her death she became one of the
greatest reformers, if not the greatest, that has ever sat upon the
dragon throne. One cannot but wish therefore in the interests of
sentiment that it were possible to overlook many things she did from
1898 to 1900, which in the interests of truth it will be impossible to
disregard. Nevertheless we should remember that she was driven to these
things by the filching of her territory by the foreigners, and by the
false