Around us there was now a curious and unnatural quiet, as if the world was very old here, and the noises of modern life remained abashed at the thresholds.  I knew well from a study of the curious old Chinese maps, which the vendors of Peking objets d’art always offer you, where we were, and it was almost with a sense of familiarity that I turned and made my way to the east.  There I knew in ordinary times the Empress Dowager herself lodged in a whole Palace to herself.  Somewhere not very far from us I caught the soft cooing of the doves, which everyone in Peking, from Emperor to shopkeepers, delights to keep, in order to send sailing aloft on balmy days with a low-singing whistle attached to their wings—­a whistle which makes music in the air and calls the other birds.  Who has not heard that pleasant sound?  Even the Empress Dowager must have loved it.  Here, in her private realm, the doves were cooing, cooing, cooing, just like the French word roucoulement, spoken strongly with the accent of Marseilles.  You could hear these birds of the Marseilles accent saying continually that French word:  Roucoulement, roucoulement, roucoulement, with never a break....

We ran up some flights of marble steps, following these gentle sounds, and walked along a broad terrace adorned with fantastically curved dwarf-trees, set in rich porcelain pots, and made stately with enormous bronze braziers.  The Russian officer, and even the Russian sergeant, were agreeably stroked by the contact with all this quiet and seclusion and this old-world air, and they murmured in sibilant Russian.  It pleased them immensely.

We hastened to the end of the terrace, going quickly, because we were anxious to find more delights; and as we turned at the end, without any warning there were a few light screams and a little scuffle of feet which died away rapidly.  Women....

We caught a disappearing vision of brilliantly coloured silks and satins and rouged faces passing away through some doors, and then before we had satisfied our eyes, several flabby-faced men suddenly came out and called imperatively to us to stop and go away.  We could not go farther, they said.

The two men of the Russian army, with the instinct of discipline which we lacked, halted as if orders were being disobeyed, and looked at K——­ for inspiration.  K——­ stroked his thin moustaches, and put his head a little on one side, as if he were debating what to say.  I—­well since I had nothing to lose, and it did not really matter, I went forward without any delay, asking our interlocutors roughly what they meant and what they were doing here, and telling them, too, that we were going on.  I knew that they were sexless eunuchs, who would stammer as I had heard them stammer in the old days when I had seen them trafficking things they had been donated by officials desirous of cultivating their friendship, in the mysterious curio shops beyond the great Ch’ien Men Gate.  Nor was I wrong.  Stammering, they replied by asking how it was that orders had been broken.  Stammering, they said that all the great generals had promised that the inner Palaces were to be kept immune; now men were for ever climbing in, and others were coming openly as we were doing.  What did we wish?