Come, then, to Ferganah, to find
all the machinery of the constitution of the year VIII.
Beyond there is an immense steppe, extending before our train. Madame
de Ujfalvy-Bourdon has justly compared it to a billiard table, so
perfect in its horizontality. Only it is not an ivory ball which is
rolling over its surface, but an express of the Grand Transasiatic
running at sixty kilometres an hour.
Leaving the station of Tchontchai behind, we enter station at nine
o'clock in the evening. The stoppage is to last two hours. We get out
onto the platform.
As we are leaving the car I am near Major Noltitz, who asks young Pan
Chao:
"Have you ever heard of this mandarin Yen Lou, whose body is being
taken to Pekin?"
"Never, major."
"But he ought to be a personage of consideration, to be treated with
the honor he gets."
"That is possible," said Pan Chao; "but we have so many personages of
consideration in the Celestial Empire."
"And so, this mandarin, Yen Lou?"
"I never heard him mentioned."
Why did Major Noltitz ask the Chinaman this question? What was he
thinking about?
CHAPTER XV.
Kokhan, two hours to stop.
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