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THE DAUGHTER OF HEAVEN

BY

PIERRE LOTI AND JUDITH GAUTIER

Translated by RUTH HELEN DAVIS

CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.

10, ORANGE STREET

LEICESTER SQUARE, W. C.

1913




Preface


Thoroughly to understand China, one must realize that it has for three
hundred years cherished in its heart a deep and continually bleeding
wound. When the country was conquered by the Manchus of Tartary, the
ancient dynasty of the Mings was forced to yield the throne to the Tzin
invaders, but the Chinese nation never ceased to mourn the ancient
dynasty nor to hope for its restoration. Revolution is therefore a
permanent thing in China--a fire which smoulders eternally, breaking
into flame in one province only to be smothered and blaze out again
presently in another.

No doubt the Yellow Empire is too immense to permit of complete
understanding among the revolutionaries, or of collective effort to
break off the Tartar yoke. Several times, nevertheless, the Chinese
race has been near to victory. When, some twenty years ago, certain
events, which Europe never really understood, brought about an upheaval
in China, the revolutionaries, victorious for a time, proclaimed at
Nang-King an emperor of Chinese blood and of the dynasty of the Mings.
His name was Ron-Tsin-Tse, which means: The Final Flowering, and by
the faithful his era was called Tai-Ping-Tien-Ko, which is as much as
to say: The Empire of the Great Celestial Peace. He reigned seventeen
years, concurrently with the Tartar Emperor at Pekin and almost within
the shadow of that city.

Later, the authorities forced a complete suppression of his history:
all records of it were confiscated and burned, and men were forbidden,
under penalty of death, even to utter his name. Here, however, is the
translation of a passage relating to him which occurs in a voluminous
report addressed by the Tartar general Tsen-Konan-Wei, to the Emperor
at Pekin:

"When the revolutionaries rose in the province of Chan-Tung (he
says) they possessed themselves of sixteen provinces and six hundred
cities. Their guilty chief and his criminal friends had become really
formidable. All their generals fortified themselves in the places they
had taken, and not until they had stood three years of siege were we
again Masters in Nang-King. At this time the rebel army numbered more
than two hundred thousand men, but not one of them would surrender.
The moment they perceived themselves lost they set fire to the palace
and burned themselves alive. Many of the women hanged or strangled
themselves, or threw themselves into the lakes in the gardens. However,
I succeeded in making one young woman prisoner, and pressed her to tell
me where the Emperor was. 'He is dead,' she replied; 'vanquished, he
poisoned himself.' But immediately the new Emperor was proclaimed in
the person of his son, Hon-Fo-Tsen. She led me to the old Emperor's
tomb, which I ordered broken open. In it was found in fact the
Emperor's body, enveloped in a shroud of yellow silk embroidered with
dragons. He was old, bald, and had a white mustache. I caused his body
to be burned and his ashes to be thrown to the winds. Our soldiers
destroyed all that remained within the walls: there were three days and
nights of killing and pillage. However, one troop of several thousands
of rebels, very well-armed, succeeded in escaping from the city,
dressed in the costumes of our dead, and it is to be feared that the
new Emperor was able to escape with them."

This Emperor, Hon-Fo-Tsen, who, in fact, did succeed in fleeing from
Nang-King, was looked upon by the real Chinese as their legitimate
sovereign, and his descendants in secret no doubt reigned after him
uninterruptedly.

Several years ago a very remarkable man, who seemed to incarnate in
himself the new China, dreamed of a pacific and genuine reconciliation
of the two inimical races. (He had many dreams indeed: one of them,
for instance, that of founding the United States of the World.) He
conceived the almost unrealizable project of converting to his ideas
the Emperor at Pekin himself and of securing his help to reform China
without the spilling of any blood. His name was Kan-You-Wey. To get
near the Emperor he opened a school at Pekin in 1889.

Many rumors, though very conflicting ones, were in circulation
concerning the personality of this invisible Emperor Kwang-Su, kept as
he was under strict guardianship, like a captive in the heart of his
palace and so unknown to everyone. Some versions declared him alert,
well-read, interested in modern things; others represented him as
feeble in body and spirit, given to excesses and incapable of action.

Kan-You-Wey would believe only in the favorable version: he knew
besides What the ministers of the Dowager Regent were worth, masters
with her of the Imperial power. He pitied the Imperial victim. His
whole heart turned toward his sovereign because he was unhappy. How
could he reach him in his quadrupled