splendor and magnificent luxury, the plafonds, the gleaming
chandeliers with their flashing facets, or the height and lofti-
ness characteristic of halls and drawing rooms in the palaces
of European capitals. The ceiling was low, and no expensive
furniture was to be seen. And yet in this room I met one of
the greatest and most remarkable men of those days, the
Emperor of Japan, Mutsuhito, Equal with Gods, Meiji,
Mikado.

Approaching with slow steps, with a distinguished, yet
unpretentious demeanor, he met me in the middle of the
audience chamber. The Master of the Imperial Household
withdrew. There was but one more person in the room, the
interpreter, who spoke only Russian besides his own language
and who remained humbly at a few steps' distance.

If just before the audience I had to a certain extent been
a prey to the feeling of solemn excitement that seizes a person
with or without his own will when suddenly facing the man
who more than anyone else in our time influenced the eastern
half of Asia, all such feelings vanished almost completely
when the Emperor with a kind smile extended his hand to me.
That time was just forty years past when the mortals granted
the favor of entering the presence of the divine Mikado had
had to lie prone during the whole audience, their foreheads
touching the floor, upon penalty of death if they dared let a
glance from their wretched mortal eyes fall upon the divine
sovereign. In his movements, his gestures, and his whole be-
havior, the Emperor was nothing but a human, and every-
thing indicated that he personally did not demand that he
be looked upon as a divine being.

Physically and mentally the Emperor Mutsuhito was head
and shoulders above all his subjects, a tall man with a slight
stoop. At the time he was fifty-six years of age, but in spite
of his raven-black hair and his black mustache and imperial,
he appeared old. His features were coarse and lacked the re-
finement that might have been expected in a man of such

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