Page:China Under the Empress Dowager - ed. Backhouse and Bland - 1914.pdf/191

 the reformer Liang Ch'i-ch'ao). The Empress had a special grudge against this Censor because he had ventured to impeach her morals in a recent memorial, but as he had taken no part in the conspiracy against her person she spared his life.

Tzǔ Hsi in due course proceeded to the "Ocean Terrace," accompanied only by Li Lien-ying, who had been ordered to replace the Emperor's eunuchs by creatures of his own. (Kuang Hsü’s former attendants were either put to death or banished to the post roads.) A Manchu who heard an account of the interview from Duke Kuei Hsiang, Tzǔ Hsi's younger brother, is our authority for what occurred at this dramatic meeting. The Empress Dowager bluntly informed Kuang Hsü that she had decided to spare his life and, for the present at any rate, to allow him to retain the throne. He would, however, be kept henceforward under strict surveillance, and every word of his would be reported to her. As to his schemes of reform, which at first she had encouraged, little dreaming to what depths of folly his infatuate presumption would lead him, they would all be repealed. How dared he forget what great benefits he owed her, his elevation to the throne and her generosity in allowing him to administer the government, he a poor puppet, who had no right to be Emperor at all, and whom she could unmake at will? There was not, she said, a single Manchu in high place but wished his removal, and urged her to resume the Regency. True, he had sympathisers among the Chinese, traitors all; with them she would deal in due course. Kuang Hsü's secondary consort (the Chen Fei or Pearl Concubine, the only one of his wives with whom he seems to have been on affectionate terms) knelt then before Tzǔ Hsi, imploring her to spare the Emperor further reproaches. She actually dared to suggest that he was, after all, the lawful Sovereign and that not even the Empress Dowager could set aside the mandate of Heaven. Tzǔ Hsi angrily dismissed her from the Presence, ordering her to be confined in another part of the Palace, where she remained until, in 1900, there came an opportunity in which the