Page:China Under the Empress Dowager - ed. Backhouse and Bland - 1914.pdf/148

 instigation of Prince Kung and the Princes of the Imperial family, had no intention of submitting, and peremptorily insisted upon taking the position to which her actual rank and authority entitled her. The quarrel was sharp but short. Tzǔ Hsi, as might have been expected, carried the day, but she felt that such a scene before the ancestral tombs, witnessed by a large entourage, was semi-sacrilegious and from every point of view unseemly. She had been made to lose face by the incident — clearly premeditated — and the fact had immediate effect upon her subsequent actions and her relations with her colleague.

At the time of this progress to the tombs, Jung Lu was in command of the Metropolitan Gendarmerie, entrusted with the duty of escorting Their Majesties. Shortly after their return to Peking, however, he incurred her sharp displeasure by reason of conduct which Tzǔ Hsi was not likely to overlook, even in her chief favourite. Ever since the Jehol days of the Tsai Yüan conspiracy, and particularly during the crisis that followed the death of T'ung- Chih, this powerful Manchu had enjoyed her favour and confidence in an unusual degree, and as Comptroller of her Household, he had the right of entrée to the Forbidden City at all times. But in 1880, suffering no doubt from ennui induced by the inactivity of Court life, he committed the indiscretion of an intrigue with one of the ladies of the late Emperor's seraglio. Information of the scandal was laid before Her Majesty by the Imperial tutor Weng T'ung-ho, between whom and Jung Lu there was never love lost. It was commonly rumoured at Court, after the event, that Tzǔ Hsi, leaving nothing to chance, had herself discovered the culprit in the women's quarters of the Palace, a heinous offence. Be this as it may, Jung Lu