Книга только для ознакомления
.
The problem is to so manipulate the laws of nature as to prevent
the Emperor outliving the Empress Dowager, and not allow the
world to know that you have been trifling with occult forces. He
must die a natural death, a death which is above suspicion. He
must not die one day after the Empress Dowager as that would
create talk. And he ought to die some time before her. The death
fuse is one which often burns very much longer than we expect--
was it not one of the English kings who said "I fear I am a very
long time a-dying, gentlemen" --and sometimes it burns out sooner
than is intended. There were two imperial death fuses burning at
the same time in that Forbidden City of Peking. The Empress
Dowager had "had a stroke." Hers was undoubtedly nature's own
work. But the enemies of Yuan Shih-kai tell us that the Emperor
had "had a Chinese doctor," to whom the great Viceroy paid
$33,000 for his services. We are told that the Empress Dowager in
reality died first and then the Emperor, though the Emperor's
death was first announced, and the next day that of the Dowager.
What then are we to infer? That the Emperor was poisoned? Let it
be so. That is what the Japanese believed at the time. But who
did it? Most assuredly no one man. One might have employed a
Chinese physician for him, but the last man whose physician the
Emperor would have accepted would have been Yuan Shih-kai's. Had
you or I been ill would we have allowed the man who was the cause
of our fall to select our physician? But granted that Yuan
Shih-kai did employ his physician, and that his death was the
result of slow poisoning, could Yuan Shih-kai have so manipulated
Prince Ching, the Regent (who is the late Emperor's brother), the
ladies of the court, and all those thousands of eunuchs, to
remain silent as to the death of the Empress Dowager until he had
completed the slow process on His Majesty? No! If the Emperor was
poisoned--and the world believes he was--there are a number of
others whose skirts are as badly stained as those of the great
Viceroy, or long ere this his body would have been sent home a
headless corpse instead of with "rheumatism of the leg
|
