Rene Leys, by Victor Segalen, translated and with an introduction by J.A. Underwood, preface by Ian Buruma. New York: New York Review of Books, 2003, 210 pp. $14 (paper)

"Who is this lad, this Belgian youth, who forbids Manchu princes possession of their future concubines? . . . . Who . . . has attained the heart of the center of the Within -- nay, better than the heart: the bed!" Thus rhetorically asks the author.

The bed belongs to the empress; the adolescent is Rene Leys, who with his good looks and his enterprise opens all doors, including those of the Forbidden City, to become a major political power in still-imperial Peking.

In actuality the adventuresome young man was a 19-year-old Frenchman named Maurice Roy, whom author Victor Segalen had met upon his arrival in the Chinese capital in 1909. He engaged the talented youth as his tutor and listened to the increasingly interesting adventures he was told.