hat I would be only too happy to stay
with her. I must say the truth, I did enjoy the lovely scenery, the
beautiful weather, superb sunshine, with Her Majesty so kind to me and
talking to me in such a motherly way made me love her more and more
every minute I was there. I was so extremely happy there that even Paris
pleasures had gone out of my memory entirely.

At last we arrived at another part of the lake. This was more of a
stream, very narrow, just wide enough for one boat to pass. On both
sides of the bank were planted drooping willow trees that reminded me of
the Chinese Fairy tales I have read. This time I saw the servant girls,
amahs, and also eunuchs carrying boxes, walking on both sides of the
shore. Only two boats were going then, the Young Empress' and ours.
Her Majesty said: "We will arrive at the bottom of the hill in a few
minutes." When we came near the shore I saw her yellow chair and several
red chairs waiting. We landed and walked to the chairs. I watched Her
Majesty get into hers and noticed this was not the same chair she used
this morning. This little one was, of course, of yellow, with yellow
poles, and two eunuchs carried it, with yellow rope across their
shoulders, and four eunuchs supported the poles, one on each corner of
the chair. They were just going to raise her chair up when she said: "Yu
tai tai (Lady Yu) I give you and your daughters special favor and give
you a red chair with red cord that I have given to only a few people."
The Young Empress looked at us, which I understood at once was meant for
us to kowtow to her, which we did, and waited until the Empress got into
hers. Then we went to search for ours. To my surprise our own eunuchs
were standing waiting beside our chairs. On the poles I noticed that
my name was written and I asked our eunuch the reason. He said that Her
Majesty gave the order the night before. It was a lovely ride going to
the top of the hill. I saw Her Majesty's chair in front, and the Young
Empress'. They looked to me quite dangerous in ascending that way, and
the men at the back of the chair had to raise the poles above their
heads so as to make the chair the same level in ascending. I was quite
nervous and was very much afraid that they might fall off and injure me.
Our eunuchs were walking beside our chairs. I said to one of them that
I was afraid the chair bearers might slip. He told me to look back of my
chair, which I did, and to my surprise they had the p