the real Chinese as their legitimate sovereign, and his descendants in secret no doubt reigned after him uninterruptedly.
Several years ago a very remarkable man, who seemed to incarnate in himself the new China, dreamed of a pacific and genuine reconciliation of the two inimical races. (He had many dreams indeed: one of them, for instance, that of founding the United States of the World.) He conceived the almost unrealizable project of converting to his ideas the Emperor at Pekin himself and of securing his help to reform China without the spilling of any blood. His name was Kan-You-Wey. To get near the Emperor he opened a school at Pekin in 1889.
Many rumors, though very conflicting ones, were in circulation concerning the personality of this invisible Emperor Kwang-Su, kept as he was under strict guardianship, like a captive in the heart of his palace and so unknown to everyone. Some versions declared him alert, well-read, interested in modern things; others represented him as feeble in body and spirit, given to excesses and incapable of action.
Kan-You-Wey would believe only in the favorable version: he knew besides What the ministers of the Dowager Regent were worth, masters with her of the Imperial power. He pitied the Imperial victim. His whole heart turned toward his sovereign because he was unhappy. How could he reach him in his quadrupled walls? How win the attention of his melancholy idol? Kan-You-Wey ten times renewed his attempts, with the zeal of an apostle, and succeeded finally, in 1898, thanks to one of his disciples, in putting before the Emperor a memorial that he had prepared for him.
