usted--one General Chen Yi. Arming himself with a sword and
beside himself with rage he burst into the room where his favourite
concubine was lying with her newly-delivered baby. With a few savage
blows he butchered them both, leaving them lying in their gore, thus
relieving the apoplectic stroke which threatened to overwhelm him.
Nothing better illustrates the real nature of the man who had been so
long the selected bailiff of the Powers.

On the 12th May it became necessary to suspend specie payment in Peking,
the government banks having scarcely a dollar of silver left, a last
attempt to negotiate a loan in America having failed. Meanwhile under
inspiration of General Feng Kuo-chang, a conference to deal with the
situation was assembling at Nanking; but on the 11th May, the Canton
Military Government, representing the Southern Confederacy, had already
unanimously elected Vice-President Li Yuan Hung as president of the
Republic, it being held that legally Yuan Shih-kai had ceased to be
President when he had accepted the Throne on the previous 13th December.
The Vice-President, who had managed to remove his residence outside the
Palace, had already received friendly offers of protection from certain
Powers which he declined, showing courage to the end. Even the Nanking
Conference, though composed of trimmers and wobblers, decided that the
retirement of Yuan Shih-kai was a political necessity, General Feng
Kuo-chang as chairman of the Conference producing at the last moment a
telegram from the fallen Dictator declaring that he was willing to go if
his life and property were guaranteed.

A more dramatic collapse was, however, in store. As May drew to an end
it was plain that there was no government at all left in Peking. The
last phase had been truly reached. Yuan Shih-kai's nervous collapse was
known to all the Legations which were exceedingly anxious about the
possibility of a soldiers' revolt in the capital. The arrival of a first
detachment of the savage hordes of General Chang Hsun added Byzantine
touches to a picture already lurid with a sickened ruler and the
Mephistophelian figure of that ruler's _ame damnee_, the Secretary Liang
Shih-yi, vainly striving to transmute paper into silver, and find the
wherewithal to prevent a sack of the capital. It was said at the time
that Liang Shih-yi had won over his master to trying one last throw of
the dice. The troops of the remaining loyal Generals, such as Ni
Shih-chung