Книга только для ознакомления
.
After we had seen the various customs without, I was taken into
the dining-room, where I sat down with the young Princess and her
two aunts, daughters of the Dowager. They were very kind and
polite, and did all in their power to make me feel at home. We
were attended by white-robed eunuchs, who knelt when they spoke
to the Princess. There was such a lot of them.
"How many servants do you use ordinarily?" I asked the eldest
daughter.
"About four hundred," she replied.
I thought of the task of robing four hundred servants in new
white sackcloth, and attending to all the other things that I had
seen, in the forty-eight hours since the death of the Dowager
Princess. Even the bread, instead of being dotted with red as it
is ordinarily, was dotted with black!
As we were finishing our supper we heard the horns of the priests
and went to see them arrive. Prince Su, and the other male
members of the family, went out to the door to receive them, but
we remained within. They first went to the gallery, then the head
priest came down into the sacrificial hall and made nine
prostrations before the catafalque, without, however, pouring or
offering wine. After each third prostration he stood up and
raised his clasped hands to a level with his eyes. They then
began their weird music, standing on the two sides of the raised
platform between the gate and the house, thus allowing a
passageway between them for the guests
|
