that his father, Prince Tuan, had brought the Empire to the verge of ruin, and that the guilt which be had thus incurred towards his august ancestors could never be wiped out. In order to save the “face” of the Ileir Apparent and her own, in a difficult position, the Edict describes him as being fuliy convinced of the impossibility of his succeeding to the Throne under existing conditions, and that he himself had therefore petitioned Her Majesty to cancel her previous decision. In granting this request and directing him to remove himself forthwith from the palace precincts, the Empress conferred upon him the rank of an Imperial Duke of the lowest grade, excusing him at the same time from performance of any official duties in that capacity. By this decision she meant to mark the con- tempt into which the Heir Apparent had fallen, for the rank thus granted him was a low one, and, without any official duties or salary, he was condemned to a life of poverty and obscurity. This fallen Heir to the Dragon Throne is a well-known figure to-day in the lowest haunis of the Chinese city at Peking: a drunkard and disreputable character, living the life of a gambler, notorious only as a swashbuckler of romantic past and picturesque type,— one who, but for adverse fate and the accursed foreigner, would have been Emperor of China.
Having deposed him, the Empress let it be known that the selection of an heir to the disconsolate shade of T’ung- Chih would be postponed “until a suitable candidate should be found,” an intimation generally understood ta mean that the vital question of providing an heir in legiti- mate and proper succession to the Throne could not well be determined until China's foreign relations, as well as her internal affairs, had been placed upon a basis of greater security. It is curious to note how, in all such utterances, it appears to have been tacitly understood that the Emperor Kuang HUsii was a “bad life.”
Thus, in exile, the Old Buddha wore philosophically the white sheet of penance and burned the eandle of expiation, preparatory to re-entering anon upon a new lease of power in that Peking where, as she well knew, the memory of the
