I, the Doctor Sian Seng to Tching-bit-ha-ki.

On receipt of this letter forthwith go to Houang-xa, to the yellow temple of Fo, and burn upon the altar a stick of camphor for me, for I have arrived safely at Paris. I have sailed five thousand three hundred and twenty leagues since my embarkation at Hoang-Ho, with peril of life beneath my feet the whole voyage—and Providence has protected me.

May my ancestors deign to watch over me more than ever at this moment! Paris is a field of battle, where bullets are represented by wheels and horses; those who have neither carriage nor horses, perish miserably in the flower of their age. There are seventeen hospitals for the wounded; I saw one yesterday with this inscription, in large letters, “Hospital for Incurables.” The wounded who are carried there, know when they enter that they will never come out alive—they know their fate! It is very charitable on the part of the doctors. You can now see that the Barbarians understand civilization!

Notwithstanding the sage precepts of Li-ki, and the law of Menu, I have purchased a carriage on four wheels, drawn by horses, and have wept in anticipation of the unhappy fate of those I am about to send to the “Hospital for Incurables;” but there are but two modes of living in Paris—you must crush others, or be crushed yourself. I think it most prudent to do the first.

I went down to the river to make my ablutions, and was about to commence this holy act, when a policeman threatened me with his baton. In looking at the water, I was consoled for the deprivation, as it had not the pure and limpid flow of our own Yu-ho, which runs by Pekin under the marble bridge of Pekiao. The Seine is a dirty yellow stream, which descends to the ocean for a bath. I shall wait until it comes back!

I was told that Christians take a bath at home, which costs two francs. I called for one, and was furnished with an iron box, very much resembling the coffins in the cemetery of Ming-tang-y; one gets into them and lies upon the back, with the hands crossed upon the breast, like a true believer who has died in the faith of Fo.

In Paris, each house is governed by a tyrant, who is called a porter. There are twenty thousand porters here, who make a million of inhabitants unhappy and desolate. They sometimes make a Revolution to overturn a poor devil, called a king; but they have never overturned the twenty thousand porters. Mine receives my orders with loud explosions of laughter, and when I threaten him, he says to me, “You are a Chinaman!” Since he thinks to insult me by calling me by the name of my country, I make the matter equal by crying, “And you are a Frenchman!”

“Render insult for insult,” says the sage Menu. These things have most astonished me in Paris.

My first duty (in quality of my rank in the Ming tang, the greatest society of savans in the universe) has been to visit the Royal Library, renowned here as “a vast depot of all human knowledge.” This asylum of meditation, of reflection and study, is situated in the most noisy street in the city; the millions of books it contains shake continually with the passage of carriages and other vehicles. It is very much as if you and I should go for instruction between the bridge Tchoung-yu-Ho-Khias, where all the cats in Pekin are sold, and the street Toung-Kiang-mi-Kiang, where salutes are fired night and day!

One of the librarians received me with great politeness, and offered me a chair.

“Sir,” said I, in tolerable French, “I would be much obliged if you could lend me, for a few moments, the ‘History of the Dynasties of the Five Brothers Loung, and of the sixty-four ChÉ-ti’? You know that these glorious reigns commenced immediately after the third race of the first emperors—those of the Jin-Hoang, or the Emperors of Men, to distinguish them from the second race, called Ti-Hoang, or Emperors of the Earth.”

The savant did not appear as if he knew it. He put into his nose some of the forbidden opium, and after reflecting awhile, said,

“Lao-yÉ, we have not that.”

He appeared pleased to show me that he understood that “Lao-yÉ” was equivalent to “sir,” and repeated it a thousand times during our conversation.

“You know, sir,” said I, continuing, “that after the glorious reigns of Koung-san-che, of Tchen Min, of Y-ti-chÉ, and of Houx-toun-che, came the reigns, still more glorious, of the seventy-one families, and that so much glory was only effaced by the birth of the immortal Emperor Ki, the greatest musician the world ever saw, and the inventor of Chinese politeness. I would like to consult, in this ‘vast depÔt of all human knowledge,’ the history of the immortal Ki.”

The nose of the philosophe received a second time a pinch of the forbidden opium. He then opened an enormous handkerchief of Madras, and suddenly jerking the head, neck, and hand, made a great noise resembling that of a prolonged stroke upon a gong. When this tempest of the brain had passed by, he folded up his Madras, drew it five times across his face, and said,

“We have not the history of the immortal Ki, your emperor.”

“You have nothing, then,” said I, with that calmness which arises from wisdom, and which is humiliating to those Barbarians whom the genius of Menu has never enlightened.

The learned man crossed his hands and inclined his head, shutting his eyes, which means “Nothing,” in the language of the universe.

Nevertheless, I continued my requests.

“Since you have no books in this ‘vast depÔt of all human knowledge,’ have you any maps?”

“Oh, maps!” said he, with the smile of a resuscitated savant, “we have all kinds of maps, from the map of the Roman Emperor Theodosius to that of ‘dame de coeur.’”

This answer, I have since been told, is a bon mot, apparently made by this man of study to relieve his mind of ennui.

“Will you then show me,” said I, “the map of the Celestial Empire, called Tai-thsing-i-thoung icki?”

The Madras again covered the visage of the savant; the box of opium was exhibited, and a shake of the head, covered with a white powder, announced to me that the map I sought did not exist at this vast depÔt.

“Wait,” said he to me, with a joyous expression, “I can, nevertheless, show you a few Chinese books which will please you. Follow me, lao-yÉ.”

I followed him.

We descended into some subterranean galleries, like to those of the Indian temples of the “Elephant.” The air was infected with camphor and whale oil. Right and left one could see by the twilight a great quantity of busts, in plaster, of the great men of France, all dead—because, I am told, there are never any living great ones there.

“See!” said my conductor, “this is the shelf of Chinese books.”

They were Persian.

I thanked the philosophe with that simple politeness which was invented by our immortal Ki, and left the library.

As I passed to my lodgings, I saw a crowd collected near some scaffolding; and on inquiring of my coachman what was the cause of it, was told that they were erecting a monument to a great man, dead two hundred years ago, whose name was MoliÈre. He composed chefs-d’oeuvre, which were hissed at their performance; he was persecuted by the court, martyrized by his wife and his creditors, and died miserably at the theatre between two suet candles. They refused the honors of burial to his remains; and now, two hundred years after his death, his countrymen, to show their gratitude, erect a monument to his memory, to recompense his sufferings.

In most things the French are lively and mercurial; but in the matter of gratitude, they take two centuries for reflection.

There is no great stone in the valley which has not “the ambition to emulate Mount Tergyton,” says a verse of Li-Ki; so at Paris they have taken it into their heads to imitate our large and endless Street of Tranquillity, “Tchang-ngan-Kiai,” which runs the whole length of the imperial palace at Pekin, and terminates at the most beautiful of the seventeen gates of the city, “Thsiam Men,” the gate of “Military Glory.”

I felt pride while traversing their Rue Rivoli, in thinking what a miserable imitation it was of our incomparable “tchang-ngan-Kiai;” my national vanity was appeased.

It was in following this street that I came to another palace, inhabited by the four hundred and seventy emperors who govern Paris, France, and Africa, and whom they call “Deputies.” One must have a little dirty piece of paper to gain admittance there. You give this little paper to a man with a red face and a saucy-looking nose, who permits you to enter. The four hundred and seventy emperors, each sit at the bottom of a dark well, which seems lighted by the moon in her last quarter. An old emperor, with a pleasing and paternal countenance, named Mr. SosÉ, governs the four hundred and seventy others, by playing tunes upon a little silver bell. This spectacle is very amusing. The emperors are all badly dressed and coiffÉ. They talk a great deal—walk about—play tricks—sleep, or write letters to their wives, while an emperor, perched up on a high seat, sings in a low voice something mysterious, to a monotonous air, which resembles our “Hymn to our Ancestors,” without the accompaniment of our national music. Each emperor has the right to mount this seat, and sing to himself his favorite song, turning his back upon Mr. SosÉ. I asked a person sitting by me, “What they called this play?” The “Representative Government,” he replied.

Salutes are not fired at Paris, except on the birth-day of the king, which renders a sojourn here almost insupportable. I suppose this wonderful spectacle does not amuse the inhabitants, since they only give it once a year; and if it does not, why do they have it even on the king’s birth-day? I asked this question of a man whom one calls a friend here, one Mr. Lefort, my neighbor at my unfurnished lodgings, who answered, “I do not understand you.”

This answer is made to me every day. One would imagine I spoke to them in Chinese.

Being deprived of these “feux de joie,” which delight us at Pekin, each evening I go to spend a few hours at the Opera, which is a theatre where they pay public screamers salaries of fifty thousand francs per annum. When a young man frightens his family by his cries, they shut him up in a place they call “the Conservatory,” where a professor of screaming gives him lessons for twenty-four moons. The pupil then enters the Opera, and acts a part before fifty copper instruments, which make a thousand times more noise than he does himself. You can well comprehend that a good Chinaman, habituated from infancy to the soft melody of the “Hymn to Aurora,” does not feel inclined to have his ears bored twice by these public screamers at the Opera; so I was about to make my adieu to the theatre the first evening, but having learned that, with a contradiction peculiarly French, they performed other pieces, in which not a word was said, I continued my visits. I was delighted with this spectacle, which they call the “ballet.” Nothing is so admirable at Paris as this performance; so that when seeing it one does not even regret Pekin. Figure to yourself fifty women, with Chinese feet, dancing “À ravir” without uttering a word. I have taken a box for all the “ballets.”

There is a danseuse among them called Alexandrine, and surnamed FigurantÉ. I suppose on account of her fine figure. She has splendid black hair, which flows down in torrents to her feet; and those feet so small that, in her perpetual whirlpool of pirouettes and entrechats, they disappear from the sight. For ten nights, would you believe it, I have watched this “danseuse” with particular attention, forgetting the high mission with which I was entrusted, and the forty revolutions of twelve moons which rest upon my head.

One evening the door of my box opened and a man entered, bowing profoundly, and with much respect, said, “Light of the Celestial Empire, Star of Tien, I have a favor to ask.”

I made him the universal sign which means, “Speak.” He did speak.

“I am a decorator of the Opera,” said he, “and am at this moment putting the finishing touches to a Chinese Kiosque for the new ballet of “China Opened, or the Loves of Mademoiselle Flambeau, of Pekin;” may I request you to come, during the interval of the acts, and give a glance at my work, and suggest any improvement that may strike you?”

“Sir,” replied I, “your request is not disagreeable. Show me the way—I will follow you.”

We walked for some time along subterranean damp galleries until we arrived in the “coulisses” of the Opera. The decorator showed me his work, and I had nothing but praise to offer him; it was in the most exquisite Chinese taste.

There was a soft whispering near us of sweet and girlish voices, which caused me to turn suddenly. It was a group of young danseuses, who profited by the interval to gossip a little to relieve themselves, like mutes delivered from a rÉgime forcÉ. A blaze of light made me close my eyes—Mademoiselle Alexandrine was there.

I looked for my friend the decorator to keep me in countenance, but he had disappeared.

I invoked the spirits of my glorious ancestors, and asked of them courage and calmness of mind, those two virtues so necessary in love and war.

Mademoiselle Alexandrine had the carriage of a queen; her well-rounded and graceful person was sustained solely by her left foot, upon which she stood proudly, while the right one undulated from right to left, the heel and toe only touching the floor. My eyes followed that wonderful foot and never left it.

Imagine my astonishment when I heard the mellifluous voice of Mademoiselle addressing me with a boldness worthy of a captain in our Imperial Tiger Guard.

“Will you do us the honor, sir, to assist at the first representation of the Ballet Chinois?”

I quitted the foot to look up at the face of the danseuse, and answered with a well imitated Parisian accent, “I should be delighted to be there, Mademoiselle, to put my eyes at your feet.”

Mademoiselle Alexandrine took me caressingly by the arm, and made me promenade with her behind the scene.

“So it seems, sir, that China really exists, and that the Yellow river is not a fable? Tell me, are not all Chinamen made of porcelain? Do they really walk and talk like you and me? I did not know that there were any other Chinamen than our Auriol de Franconi—do you know Auriol?”

All these questions were asked so rapidly as to defy answer. At her last word, the danseuse, called upon the stage by a signal, quitted suddenly my arm, and bounded away with the grace and springiness of a gazelle, humming the air to which she was to dance. I awaited her return to answer her questions; but when she again took my arm, she had apparently forgotten them; her gayety had disappeared—care contracted her brow.

“Have you noticed how cold the audience is this evening?” said she at length. “Is there an Opera in your country?”

“No, Mademoiselle.”

“What a miserable country! Without an Opera! What do you do, then?”

“One is miserable s’ennuie, Mademoiselle, because you are not there!”

“That is very gallant. By the bye, you have beautiful fans in your country; the nephew of a peer of France gave me a Chinese fan as a New Year’s gift—un bijou adorable; the sticks were of ivory, with incrustations of silver filigree work, and the picture of two yellow cats playing with their tails as they ran in a circle; but I lost it at ‘Muzard’s.’”

“It is very easy to replace it, Mademoiselle; I brought thirty-three with me, made at the celebrated manufactory of Zhe-hol.”

“Is it possible! And what will you do with such a collection?”

“They are intended as presents for the wives of ministers and ambassadors.”

“Bah! the wives of ministers will laugh at your fans; and they are only old withered faces! If I had your thirty-three fans, I would make all the first danseuses in Paris die of chagrin.”

“Mademoiselle, they shall be at your door to-morrow morning.”

“No one can be more French than you, sir; but who would have expected it of a Chinaman. I will give you my address—“Mademoiselle Alexandrine, de Saint Phar, Rue de Provence, on the first floor.” My porter receives my presents any time after seven o’clock in the morning, and places them scrupulously in the hand of my chambermaid after mid-day.”

She made a pirouette, and disappeared.

Returning to my hotel after the Opera, I wished to meditate upon my position, but my ideas wandered. You know my harem of KhÉ-Emil—it is the most modest of harems—scarcely can one count in it fifteen women of Zhe-hol of Tartar blood, and as many of Thong-Chou-fo, of pure Chinese race, not to speak of some twenty or more odalisques, maintained merely as decorations to the seraglio. Well, if Mademoiselle entered that harem, she would eclipse my favorites among its women, as the light of the full moon puts out the morning star. Yes, I have, unhappily, discovered that her face charms me more than my whole thirty, shut up in my modest harem. It is an unhappy fate! Happy are the three mandarins of the seventh class, who have accompanied me to Paris. They dine at the Rocher de Cancale; they eat beef in spite of the beard of Menu; they attend the minister’s soirÉes, and know nothing of the exquisite foot of Mademoiselle Alexandrine de St. Phar.

The next morning at eight o’clock, I sent to her porter the thirty-three fans, with a box of the delicious tea of “Satouran.”

In the afternoon I dressed myself in court costume, my mandarin’s cap of canary-yellow, ornamented with a plume of Leu-tze, and long robe of the color clair de la lune, with gloves of citron-colored crape. My glass told me I resembled the young Tcheon, the Prince of Light, and Son of the Morning. Flattered by my mirror, I went to visit Mademoiselle Alexandrine, and was introduced with the most surprising facility.

Her dress costume only rendered her more beautiful; her foot alone was always the same. It seemed to live in a perpetual motion; one might well say that it contained the soul of the danseuse, and that she thought with her dear little toes.

“Sir,” said she, taking me familiarly by the hands, “I am the happiest girl in the world! your present is truly royal. Sit down upon this chair, and let us converse a little. I wish to present to you my little sister, a perfect angel, as you’ll see.”

A young girl about twelve years old, as graceful as a fawn, leaped into my arms, and seized my mandarin’s cap from my head.

“What do you think of her,” said the danseuse.

“She is your sister,” said I, with an expressive glance.

“Still gallant, dear doctor!”

“What is her name, Mademoiselle?”

“She has none yet, doctor; she waits for a godfather—it is the custom at the Opera. Will you be hers?”

“Very willingly, Mademoiselle.”

“Give her, then, a pretty name—some name of your country.”

“Very well; then I name her ‘Dileri,’ which is a Mogul name.”

“What does it mean?”

“Light of the eyes. Does it please you, Mademoiselle?”

“Dileri is charming! Do the Moguls have such soft names, doctor?—and they are still Moguls. It is wonderful! Mademoiselle Dileri, thank your godfather.”

With that marvellous refinement with which the spirit of the great Fo has imbued his faithful followers, and which renders them superior to all of human kind, I asked Mademoiselle Alexandrine, negligently, “if she had any taste for marriage?”

“Ah!” said she, crossing her beautiful feet upon a footstool of crimson velvet, “it is not marriage that I fear, it is the husband. You do not know French husbands, dear doctor. Such egotists! They marry a pretty woman to have a slave, in spite of the law which forbids trading in human flesh; and when they have her fast enchained, they show her as a curiosity to their friends to excite their envy. Well, since China is now opened, we will go to China to seek husbands. Dear doctor, you will not find in all Paris a husband who would give his wife thirty-three fans without any pretension, as if he merely said, ‘good-day!’ Are the Chinamen good husbands, doctor?”

“Mademoiselle, ’twas a Chinaman who invented the honeymoon!”

“I do not doubt it. What a pity the Chinawomen have such queer eyes.”

“For that reason we come to seek wives at Paris.”

“Truly, doctor, you are adorable! and I am confused by your kindness. I do not know how to express my sense of your compliments, and gratitude for your splendid presents. May I not offer you a box in the fourth tier for your suite? Giselle is performed to-morrow. My cousin has written a play for the Theatre d’Ambigu; I will ask him for a box for you this evening. Perhaps you will accept a free ticket for a month on the railroad to Rouen.”

“Thanks, Mademoiselle! I am as grateful for your kind offers as if I had accepted them. But I have a favor to ask.”

“It is already granted—speak.”

“I have brought with me some Indian ink, and I beg you will permit me to make a picture of your right foot.”

“What a Chinese idea!” cried the danseuse, with a rich burst of merry laughter. “Do you call that a favor? Take your crayon, dear doctor, I give you up my foot; will you copy it au naturel, or in an odalisque’s sandal?”

“I will paint it as it is at this moment.”

“As you like; meantime I will amuse myself and little sister by admiring your thirty fans.”

At the third fan I had a striking resemblance of the wonderful foot. The danseuse glanced at it and uttered a cry of admiration, saying,

“Dear doctor, you have taken it with a dash of the pencil.”

“Mademoiselle,” answered I, “it is said of me that I could copy the wind, if I could see it pass. I have copied your foot which is more agile than the wind.”

“If you continue these compliments, doctor, I am afraid I shall fall in love with you; I, who the other day shut my door in the face of a Greek prince and two bankers.”

The candor of innocence was imprinted on the features of the danseuse; and I bowed my head in reverence before this ingenuous woman, who unveiled her heart to me without reserve. In taking leave of her I was allowed to touch with my lips the ends of fingers which rivaled her feet in beauty.

The Secretary for Foreign Affairs awaited me at five o’clock, to inquire concerning the ceremonies used at Zhe-hol and at Pekin, at the reception of European ambassadors, and to sound me in regard to certain political secrets relating to the Chinese empire and Queen Victoria.

During the audience I experienced many distractions and made many mistakes. May Ti-en grant that my errors may not one day cause trouble to the Celestial Empire. Whilst the great minister of the Christians was speaking to me, I was thinking of the foot of Mademoiselle Alexandrine St. Phar! You see that that foot will overturn Pekin yet!

After dinner, a perfumed billet, the paper of which resembled a butterfly’s wing, was brought to me, and I read as follows:

“Dear Doctor,—I hear that you have brought to this country numberless Chinese curiosities. Dileri, your charming god-daughter, is so much delighted in looking at your fans, that she longs to know all the wealth of her godfather; a childish folly! But I have promised her to visit you to-morrow at 12 o’clock.

“Your god-daughter kisses you between the eyes, and I place you at my feet.

“Alexandrine St. Phar.”

You know, my dear Tching-bit-ha-ki, that I have not brought with me many of our toys. I only provided a few as presents to attachÉs’ wives, and perhaps ministers. Happily, when I received the billet of Mademoiselle Alexandrine, I had not yet distributed any of them; nevertheless, I felt that my collection was too contemptible to be honored with a glance from the divine danseuse, and I resolved to add to it before showing it to her. I obtained all the information I could, and then went to Darbo’s, Rue Richelieu, and to Gamba’s, Rue Neuve de Capucines—two merchants of celebrity in Chinoiseries. I purchased at these shops two screens, a pagoda of rice, two boxes of cloves, four tulip vases, two complete services of porcelain, with a chamber tea service, a table of sandal wood, inlaid with cypress, four figures of mandarins in clay from Pei-ho, twelve pairs of embroidered slippers, a shop in miniature, a chamberlain with his wand of office, two leaves of tam-tam, a parasol, two lions frisÉs, and a copy of the royal carriage of the brother of the sun and moon, the Emperor Tsieng-Long.

Most of these Chinoiseries were made in Paris, and I doubted particularly the royal carriage; but the imitation was so good, that a mandarin only of the first class could distinguish the true from the counterfeit. I did not cheapen these things, and paid the bill, an enormous sum—thirty-seven hundred francs.

Night arrived; I went to bed to enjoy dreams of happiness to come, and slept with my copy of the divine foot in my hand. My first thought in the early morning was to put my Chinese riches in order, to exhibit them to the best advantage. What a happiness, said I to myself, if she will deign to point her foot to some one of these bagatelles, and say, in her flute-like tones,

“Dear doctor, give me that for my boudoir.”

At length 12 o’clock struck, and my door opened.

Oh! the City of Houris will be one day destroyed for having forgotten to produce Mademoiselle Alexandrine de St. Phar! I was thunderstruck at her morning beauty. The divine danseuse led her little sister by the hand. She threw her hat and shawl upon the first chair, pressed my hands, ran about the room, pirouetting before each Chinoiserie with cries of pleasure and joy which went to my very heart. When she had exhausted every exclamation of delight, she said to me,

“Dear doctor, I am sorry to have brought your god-daughter with me—she asks for every thing she sees. Oh, these children! one should never show them any thing. It is true I am somewhat of a child in that way, too. If I had to choose some one of these things, I should be in great embarrassment, and would not dare to do it, lest I should to-morrow regret that I had not taken something else.”

In saying these words with delicious volubility, she pushed out her right foot from the protection of the shortest of robes. She might have seduced the most virtuous Lama of Lin-Ching.

“Mademoiselle,” said I, “permit me to point out a plan to avoid that difficulty.”

“Ah, will you! Dear doctor, tell me this plan!”

“Will you swear to act according to it?”

“I swear it!”

“You will keep your oath?”

“I will.”

“Well, Mademoiselle, take them all.”

The divine danseuse raised her arms gracefully, threw back her queenly head, and her bosom of ivory palpitated with sudden gladness, like the throat of a bird that sings with very happiness.

“You are a rare fellow,” cried she; “after your death, your body should be embalmed, and your tomb be a ‘Mecca’ for all true gallants from thenceforth forever. But, dear doctor, remember that I am a woman. You do not know to what you expose yourself. Suppose I were to take you at your word?”

“I should say you were a woman of your word, and knew how to keep an oath.”

“No, no, dear doctor, no joking! you wish to try me!”

“Not in the least; I speak seriously. All these curiosities belong to me no longer—they are yours.”

“Then you must be the brother of the sun and moon and cousin to the seven stars in disguise. Long live the Emperor!”

[Conclusion in our next.