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. Her friends feared a mental breakdown, and
begged me to do all I could for her. She took me by the hand,
pulled me down on the brick bed beside her, and told me in a
pathetic way how both of her daughters had been taken from her in
a single day.
" 'But they have been taken into the palace,' I urged, to try to
comfort her, 'and I have heard that the Emperor is very fond of
your eldest daughter, and wanted to make her his empress.'
" 'Quite right,' she replied, 'but what consolation is there in
that? They are only concubines, and once in the palace they are
dead to me. No matter what they suffer, I can never see them or
offer them a word of comfort. I am afraid of the court intrigues,
and they are only children and cannot understand the duplicity of
court life--I fear for them, I fear for them,' and she swayed
back and forth on her brick bed.
"Time, however, the great healer with a little medicine and
sympathy to quiet her nerves, brought about a speedy recovery,
though in the end her fears proved all too true."
In 1897 the brother of this first concubine met Kang Yu-wei in
the south, and became one of his disciples. Upon his return to
Peking, knowing of the Emperor's desire for reform, and his
affection for his sister, he found means of communicating with
her about the young reformer.
At the time of the coup d'etat, and the imprisonment of the
Emperor, this first concubine was degraded and imprisoned on the
ground of having been the means of introducing Kang Yu-wei to the
notice of the Emperor, and thus interfering in state affairs
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