Page:China Under the Empress Dowager - ed. Backhouse and Bland - 1914.pdf/305

 Next, with an eye not only upon her future relations with foreigners but also on public opinion throughout the Empire, she issued a Decree conferring posthumous honours on the Pearl Concubine, who, as it will be remembered, was thrown down a well by her orders on the morning of the Court’s flight from the palace. In this Decree Her Majesty praises the virtue and admirable courage of the dead woman, which “led her virtuously to commit suicide when unable to catch up the Court on its departure,” unwilling as she was to witness the destruction and pollution of the ancestral shrines. Her trustworthy conduct was therefore rewarded by the granting of a post- humous title and by promotion of one step in rank in the Imperial harem. ‘The Decree was generally regarded as fulfilling all reasonable requirements of atonement towards the deceased, for in China the dead yet live and move in a shadowy, but none the less real, hierarchy. Alive, a Pearl Concubine more or less counted for little when weighed against the needs of the Old Buddha’s policies; once dead, however, her spirit must needs be conciliated and compensated.

Many Europeans who had witnessed the arrival of the Empress Dowager, remained at the railway station to see the unloading of her long baggage train, a most interesting and instructive sight. First were discharged the yellow chairs of the young Empress and the Princess Imperial, and four green chairs with yellow borders for the principat concubines; the other ladies of the Court followed in official carts, two to each vehicle. There were about ninety of them altogether, and the arrangements for their convey- ance were accompanied by ne little noise and confusion, the loquacity of some of the elder ladies being most noticeable. After their departure the attention of the eunuchs and minor officials was directed to the huge pile of the Empress Dowager’s personal baggage, which included her cooking utensils and houschold articles in daily use. This opera- tion, as well as the removal of a very large quantity of bullion (every case of which was marked with the name of the province or city that had sent it as tribute), was for a