reactionary Empress Dowager--are still encamped near the Northern
capital.

The old Peking society has therefore vanished, and in its place are
highly suspicious and hostile Legations--Legations petty in their
conceptions of men and things--Legations bitterly disliking one
another--in fact, Legations richly deserving all they get, some of the
cynics say.

The Peking air, as I have already said, is highly electrical and
unpleasant in these hot spring days with the dust rising in heavy
clouds. Squabbling and cantankerous, rather absurd and petty, the
Legations are spinning their little threads, each one hedged in by
high walls in its own compound and by the debatable question of the
_situation politique_.

Outside and around us roars the noise of the Tartar city. At night the
noise ceases, for the inner and outer cities are closed to one another
by great gates; but at midnight the gates are opened by sleepy Manchu
guards for a brief ten minutes, so that gorgeous red and blue-trapped
carts, drawn by sleek mules, may speed into the Imperial City for the
Daybreak Audience with the Throne. These conveyances contain the high
officials of the Empire. It has been noticed by a Legation stroller on
the Wall--the Tartar Wall--that the number of carts passing in at
midnight is far greater than usual; that the guards of the city gates
now and again stop and question a driver. It is nothing.

Meanwhile the dust rises in clouds. It is very dry this year--that is
all.