moment the actor and
actress, who had retired during dessert, made their entry, one in a
coachman's overcoat, the other in a nurse's jacket, and they gave us
the _Sonnettes_ with an energy, a go, a dash--well, it would only be
fair to them if Claretie, on the recommendation of Meilhac and Halevy,
offers to put them on the pension list of the Comedie Francaise.

At midnight the festival is over. We all retire to our sleeping places.
We do not even hear them shouting the names of the stations before we
come to Kan-Tcheou, and it is between four and five o'clock in the
morning that a halt of forty minutes retains us at the station of that
town.

The country is changing as the railway runs south of the fortieth
degree, so as to skirt the eastern base of the Nan Shan mountains. The
desert gradually disappears, villages are not so few, the density of
the population increases. Instead of sandy flats, we get verdant
plains, and even rice fields, for the neighboring mountains spread
their abundant streams over these high regions of the Celestial Empire.
We do not complain of this change after the dreariness of the Kara-Koum
and the solitude of Gobi. Since we left the Caspian, deserts have
succeeded deserts, except when crossing the Pamir. From here to Pekin
picturesque sites, mountain horizons, and deep valleys will not be
wanting along the Grand Transasiatic.

We shall enter China, the real China, that of folding screens and
porcelain, in the territory of the vast province of Kin-Sou. In three
days we shall be at the end of our journey, and it is not I, a mere
special correspondent, vowed to perpetual movement, who will complain
of its length. Good for Kinko, shut up in his box, and for pretty Zinca
Klork, devoured by anxiety in her house in the Avenue Cha-Coua!

We halt two hours at Sou-Tcheou. The first thing I do is to run to the
telegraph office. The complaisant Pan-Chao offers to be my interpreter.
The clerk tells us that the posts are all up again, and that messages
can be sent through to Europe.

At once I favor the _Twentieth Century_ with the following telegram:

"Sou-Tcheou, 25th May, 2:25 P.M.

"Train attacked between Tchertchen and Tcharkalyk by the gang of the
celebrated Ki-Tsang; travelers repulsed the attack and saved the
Chinese treasure; dead and wounded on both sides; chief killed by the
heroic Mongol grandee Faruskiar, general manager of the company, whose
name should be the object of universal admira