Page:China Under the Empress Dowager - ed. Backhouse and Bland - 1914.pdf/308

 in all seriousness to allow him to retire from the Grand Counci!, But Tzii Hsi, fully realising the situation, assured him of her complete canfidence, and in a highly laudatory decree refused his request.

On two subsequent occasions before her death, the popu- lace and the foreign community in Peking were afforded opportunities of witnessing the Empress Dowager’s return to the city from short excursions by railway, and on each of these her affable, almost familiar, attitude was a subject of genera! comment. The first occasion was in the follow- ing spring, when she visited the Eastern Tombs, and upon her return, sacrificing as usual before the shrine of the God of War in the enceinte of the Ch’ien-mén, she talked volubly with severat of the ladies whom she had met at Court. After emerging from the Temple, she called upon one of the eunuchs to bring her opera glasses, with which she eagerly scanned the crowd looking down from the wall of the city, waving her handkerchief whenever she per- ceived a familiar face. On one occasion she even shouted up an enquiry asking after the health of the daughter of one of the Foreign Ministers. Tbe Manchu Princes and Chamberlains of the Court were unable to conceal their indignation and wrath at such condescension on the part of the Empress Dowager towards those whom, in spite of 1900, they still regarded (and regard to this day) as outer barbarians. So much incensed were they that they even urged Chi Lu to get Her Majesty to desist, and to re-enter her chair, an invitation to which she paid not the slightest attention, being evidently well pleased at the violation of ceremonial etiquette which she was committing. It was noticed that the Emperor, on the other hand, took no notice whatsoever of the foreigners, and seemed to be sunk in a deep, listless melancholy.

The second occasion was after the Empress Dowager’s visit to the Western ‘Combs, in April 1903, four days after the death of her faithful friend and adviser, Jung Lu. On this occasion Her Majesty appeared to be in very low spirits, descending from the train slowly, and with none of her wonted vivacity. She greeted Kuei [Isiang, her