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. His prison was his
winter palace, where, for many months, he was confined in a
gilded cage of a house, on a small island, with the Empress
Dowager's eunuchs to guard him. These were changed daily lest
they might sympathize with their unhappy monarch and devise some
means for his liberation. Each day when the guard was changed,
the drawbridge connecting the island with the mainland was
removed, leaving the Emperor to wander about in the court of his
palace-prison, or sit on the southern terrace where it overlooked
the lotus lake, waiting, hoping and perhaps expecting that his
last appeal to Kang Yu-wei in which he said: "My heart is filled
with a great sorrow which pen and ink cannot describe; you must
go abroad at once and without a moment's delay devise some means
to save me," might bring forth some fruit.
Whether this confinement interfered with the health of the
Emperor or not it is impossible to say, but from the first he was
made to pose as an invalid. As his failing health was constantly
referred to in the Peking Gazette, the foreigners began to fear
that it was the intention to dispose of the Emperor, and such
pressure was brought to bear on the government as led them to
allow the physician attached to the French legation to enter the
palace and make an examination of His Majesty. He found nothing
that fresh air and exercise would not remedy and assured the
government that there was no cause for alarm, and from that time
we heard nothing more of his precarious condition
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