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One day not long after the coup d'etat a eunuch came rushing into
our compound, his face scratched and bleeding, and knocking his
head on the ground before me, begged me to save his life.
"What is the matter?" I inquired.
"Oh! let me join the church!" he pleaded.
"What do you want to join the church for?" I asked.
"To save my life," he answered.
"But what is this all about?" I urged, raising him to his feet.
"You know the eunuch who came to you to buy books," he said.
I assured him that I knew him.
"Well," he continued, "I am a friend of his. The Empress Dowager
has banished him, burned all the books he bought for the Emperor,
and I am in danger of losing my head. Let me join the church, and
thus save my life."
All I could do was to inform him that this was not the business
of the church, and after further conversation he left and I never
saw him again.
Day after day as the Emperor received the Peking Gazette on his
lonely island he saw one after another of his coveted reforms
vanish like mist before the pen of his august aunt. Nor was this
all, for often the rescinding edicts appeared under his own name,
and by the New Year, when he was brought forth to receive the
foreign ministers accredited to his court, scarcely anything
remained of all his reforms but the Peking University and the
provincial and other schools. It is not to be wondered at
therefore that he was reticent and despondent
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