She had face and hands of ivory tint, an upswept mass of blue-black hair, barely perceptible eyebrows, no apparent eyelashes, and eyes also invisible because their opening was so narrow and she kept them always downcast. She had rosebud lips, red and dewy-looking, but a nose almost nonexistent. (I was beginning to resign myself to never seeing a shapely Verona-style nose in these lands.) Her ivory face was at the moment marred by a smudge on her forehead, from her ko-tou in the courtyard. However, a small imperfection in a woman can sometimes be a most appealing feature. I began to wish very much that I could see what the rest of the young woman looked like, under her many layers of brocade —stole and robe and gown and sashes and ties and other furbelows.

I was tempted to suggest that, as soon as she had me clean all over, she might serve me in other ways. But I did not. I could not speak her language, and the necessary gestures of suggestion might have been taken as more offensive than inviting. Also, I did not know how liberal or how strict the local conventions might be in regard to such things. So I decided prudence was called for, and, when she finished my bath and made the ko-tou, I let her depart. The hour was still early, but the day had been a tiring one. My combined fatigue of traveling, excitement at having finally arrived, and languor induced by the bath put me immediately to sleep. I dreamed that I was undressing the Han maidservant like a toy doll, layer by layer, and when the last garment was peeled away she suddenly became that other toy: that bursting, blazing display called fiery trees and sparkling flowers.

In the morning, the same three women brought trays of food which they served upon our laps while we still lay in bed, and, while we broke our fast, prepared hot water to give us each another bath. I endured it without complaint, though I did think that two all-over bathings in the course of a single day was rather excessive. Then Nostril came, leading some of the stable hands carrying our travel packs. So, after the baths, we donned the finest and least worn clothes we owned. Those were our dashing Persian costumes—tulbands on our heads, embroidered waistcoats over loose shirts with tight cuffs, kamarbands around our middles, and ample pai-jamah tucked into well-cut boots. Our three maids giggled, and nervously put their hands over their mouths, as Han women always do when they laugh, but they hastened to indicate that they were tittering in admiration of our handsomeness.

Then arrived our elderly Han guide of the evening before—this time he introduced himself: Lin-ngan, the Court Mathematician—and led us from the pavilion. Now, in full morning light, I could better appreciate our surroundings, as we went along arcades and colonnades and through vine-trellised bowers and along porticoes overhung by curly-edged roof eaves and along terraces that overlooked flower-filled gardens and over high-arched bridges that spanned lotus ponds and little streams in which golden fish swam. In every place and passage we saw servants, most of them Han, male and female, richly garbed but timorously hastening on their errands, and many Mongol guardsmen in dress uniforms, standing rigid as statues but holding weapons which they looked ready to use, and we saw the occasional strolling noble or elder or courtier, as dignified and sumptuously robed and important-appearing as our guide Lin-ngan, with whom they exchanged ceremonious nods in passing.

All the unwalled passages open to the air had intricately carved and fretted balustrades and exquisitely sculptured pillars and hanging, tinkling wind chimes and silk tassels swishing like horses’ tails. All the enclosed passages where the sun did not enter were lighted by tinted Muscovy-glass lanterns like soft-colored moons, and they glowed with a lovely diffuse light, because every such passage was misted by the fragrant smoke of burning incense. And all the passages, open or enclosed, were decorated with standing objects of art: elegant marble sundials and lacquered screens and figured gongs and images of lions and horses and dragons and other animals which I could not recognize, and great urns of bronze and vases of porcelain and jade, overflowing with cut flowers.

We crossed again the gateside courtyard by which we had entered on the previous evening, and it was again or still thronged with saddle horses and pack asses and camels and carts and wagons and palanquins and people. Among that press, I happened to see two Han men just dismounting from mules and, though they were but two faces in an innumerable crowd, I had a vague sense of having seen those men before. After leading us some way farther, old Lin-ngan brought us finally to a south-facing pair of immense doors, chased and gilded and lacquered in many colors, doors so massive in size and so weighty with metal studs and bosses that they might have been intended to keep giants out—or in. Pausing with his wisp of a hand on one of the formidable wrought-dragon handles, Lin-ngan said in his whisper of a voice:

“This is the Cheng, the Hall of Justice, and this is the hour of the Khakhan’s dispensing judgment to plaintiffs and supplicants and miscreants. If you will but attend until that is concluded, my Lords Polo, he wishes to make his greetings immediately afterward.”

The frail old man, with no apparent effort, swung open the ponderous doors—they must have been cleverly counterpoised and on well-oiled hinges—and bowed us inside. He followed us in and closed the door behind us, and remained standing with us to provide helpful interpretations of what was going on in the hall.

The Cheng was a tremendous and lofty chamber, fully as big as an indoor courtyard, its ceiling held up by carved and gilded columns, its walls paneled with red leather, but its floor space empty of furniture. At the far end was a raised platform and on that a substantial thronelike chair, flanked by rows of lower and less elegantly upholstered chairs. There were dignitaries occupying all those seats, and in the shadows behind the dais were other figures standing and moving about. Between us and the platform knelt a great crowd of petitioners, enough to fill the chamber from wall to wall, most of them in coarse peasant dress but others in noble raiment.

Even from the distance at which we stood, I knew the man seated centrally on the dais. I would have known him even if he had been shabbily clothed and crammed ignominiously among the ranks of commoners on the chamber floor. The Khan Kubilai needed not his elevated throne nor his gold-threaded, fur-trimmed silk robes to proclaim himself; his sovereignty was implicit in the upright way he sat, as if he still were astride a battle charger, and in the strength of his craggy face and in the forcefulness of his voice, though he spoke only infrequently and in low tones. The men in the chairs to either side of him were almost as well dressed, but their manner made evident that they were subordinates. Our guide Lin-ngan, pointing discreetly and murmuring quietly, explained who they all were.

“One is the official called Suo-ke, which means the Tongue. Four are the Khakhan’s secretary scribes who record on scrolls the proceedings here. Eight are ministers of the Khakhan, two each of four ascending degrees. Behind the dais, those running about are relays of clerks who fetch documents from the Cheng archives, when any are needed for reference.”

The one called Tongue of the Cheng was continuously occupied, leaning down from the platform to hear a petitioner, then turning to converse with one or another of the ministers. And those eight ministers also were continuously busy, consulting with the Tongue, bidding clerks bring them documents, peering into those papers and scrolls, consulting among themselves and occasionally with the Khakhan. But the four secretaries seemed only now and then to bestir themselves to write anything on their papers. I commented that it seemed odd: the lordly ministers of the Cheng working harder than the mere secretaries.