as courteous to the Emperor as I was to
herself, and I was to place myself entirely at his disposal whenever
visitors were present. Of course I knew very well that this was not
the true reason at all but that she wanted to take every precaution
to preclude the possibility of foreigners influencing the Emperor in
matters of reform, etc.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN--THE MID-AUTUMN FESTIVAL

ON the fifteenth day of the eighth moon came the celebration of the
Mid-Autumn Festival, sometimes called the Moon Festival.

This name is derived from the belief which the Chinese hold that the
moon is not permanently round when full, but that on this particular day
it is a perfect circle. The ceremony which is gone through is conducted
entirely by the Court ladies and consists of worshiping the moon as soon
as it appears in the sky. In other respects the celebrations are exactly
the same as in the Dragon Boat Festival, presents were exchanged between
Her Majesty and the Court officials. The festival concluded with a
theatrical performance which describes a scene in the moon. The belief
is that a beautiful maiden lives in the moon, her only companion being
a white rabbit, called a Jade Rabbit. According to the play this rabbit
escapes from the moon to the Earth and becomes a young and beautiful
girl. A golden rooster which lives in the sun, becoming aware of the
rabbit's descent to the earth, himself descends from the sun and
changes into a handsome prince. Of course they very naturally meet and
immediately fall in love. Now, on the earth lived another rabbit--a
red one, who, on finding out what was going on, changed himself into a
prince also and set about making love to the beautiful maiden with the
object of cutting out the rooster. However, he was seriously handicapped
inasmuch as he was unable to change the color of his face, which
remained red, therefore his love making met with no success and the
rooster prince had it all his own way. At this point, the beautiful
maiden in the moon, on discovering her loss, sent the soldiers of Heaven
to re-capture her rabbit, with the result that she was taken back to
the moon and the rooster being left alone, had no alternative but to
reluctantly return to his home in the sun.

During this performance the head eunuch brought a young man into
the courtyard, who kowtowed to Her Majesty. This was such an unusual
occurrence that everybody noticed it. I could see that he was a stranger
and did not b