-Tartar appearance, with little galleries running
round them, and drum-shaped gateways of stone pierced in unexpected
places. There were also flowering trees and beautiful groves. It was,
indeed, charming, and over everything there was a refined coolness
which to me was something very new. We came on a last sentry, who, at
a word from his sergeant, drew a heavy iron key from a wooden box
hanging on the wall and fitted it to a lock. The key turned with a
faint screeching, which seemed out of place; the little gate was
thrust open and closed behind us, and ... at last we were within the
sacro-sanct courtyards of the rulers of the most antique Empire in the
world....

Around us there was now a curious and unnatural quiet, as if the world
was very old here, and the noises of modern life remained abashed at
the thresholds. I knew well from a study of the curious old Chinese
maps, which the vendors of Peking _objets d'art_ always offer you,
where we were, and it was almost with a sense of familiarity that I
turned and made my way to the east. There I knew in ordinary times the
Empress Dowager herself lodged in a whole Palace to herself. Somewhere
not very far from us I caught the soft cooing of the doves, which
everyone in Peking, from Emperor to shopkeepers, delights to keep, in
order to send sailing aloft on balmy days with a low-singing whistle
attached to their wings--a whistle which makes music in the air and
calls the other birds. Who has not heard that pleasant sound? Even the
Empress Dowager must have loved it. Here, in her private realm, the
doves were cooing, cooing, cooing, just like the French word
_roucoulement_, spoken strongly with the accent of Marseilles. You
could hear these birds of the Marseilles accent saying continually
that French word: _Roucoulement, roucoulement, roucoulement_, with
never a break....

We ran up some flights of marble steps, following these gentle sounds,
and walked along a broad terrace adorned with fantastically curved
dwarf-trees, set in rich porcelain pots, and made stately with
enormous bronze braziers. The Russian officer, and even the Russian
sergeant, were agreeably stroked by the contact with all this quiet
and seclusion and this old-world air, and they murmured in sibilant
Russian. It pleased them immensely.

We hastened to the end of the terrace, going quickly, because we were
anxious to find more delights; and as we turned at the end, without
any warning there were a fe