smiling oasis, dividing her time between the education of her children,
which she supervised and directed in person, and her own intellectual
pursuits, to which she devoted herself ardently. She used to draw and
paint very prettily, at that time; and she never forgot to take her
sketch-book with her when accompanying the Queen on her drives in
the neighbourhood of Nice. She sat and sketched while tea was being
prepared in some picturesque spot where the royal carriage regularly
made a prolonged halt.
She was a first-rate musician, played the harmonium on Sundays in the
chapel of the Hôtel Regina and often went into the Catholic churches
during the services in order to listen to the sacred music, which
she preferred above all others. In this way, she came to appreciate
more particularly the talent of a young organist called Pons, now a
distinguished composer, who, at that time, used to play the organ at
the church of Notre Dame at Nice. This artist, who was a native of the
south of France, possessed a remarkable gift of improvisation which
amazed the princess so greatly that she was always speaking of it to
the Queen:
"You really ought to hear him," she would say.
"But he can't bring his organ to the hotel!" the Queen replied,
laughing.
"Why should you not go to his church? I assure you that you will not be
sorry."
The Queen, who was easily persuaded by her daughter, ended by
consenting to visit Notre Dame one afternoon, on condition that she
should be alone there, with her suite, during the little recital which
the organist was to give for her benefit. Princess Beatrice, who was
delighted at attaining her object, plied me with instructions so that
the Queen might have a genuine artistic surprise:
"Be sure and see that there is no one in the church," she said to me,
"and tell M. Pons to surpass himself."
I went and called on the rector and the organist. The former very
kindly promised to take all the necessary steps for his Church to be
quite empty during Her Majesty's visit. As for M. Pons, the honour
which the Queen was doing him almost turned his head a little. He saw
himself the equal of Bach and would have accosted Mozart by his surname
if he had met him in the street.
"The Queen will be satisfied, I promise you," he declared, in his
southern sing-song.
Things passed very nearly as we hoped. At the hour agreed upon,
the royal landau stopped before the door of the church; the Queen,
accompanied by the princess and a few persons of her suite, including
myself, entered the great nave, where only a few float-lights lit up
golden stars in the spacious darkness. When the Queen was seated in the
arm-chair which I had sent on beforehand, Pons began to shed torrents
of harmony upon our heads from his organ-loft above.
Nothing would have disturbed our meditation, but for a cat, an enormous
black cat, which, after prowling behind the pillars, suddenly came up
to the royal chair unperceived and jumped most disrespectfully into Her
Majesty's lap! Picture the excitement! We drove it away. It returned.
We tried to drive it away again. But it was stubborn in its affections
and returned once more. Thereupon the Queen, who was more surprised
than annoyed, resigned herself and accepted the curious adventure. She
stroked the animal and kept it with her until the end of the recital.
6.
When Princess Henry of Battenberg did not accompany her mother on her
drives--which happened very rarely--she liked going to the Empress
Eugénie, who treated her as a daughter and who, as everybody knows, was
the godmother of Queen Victoria Eugénie of Spain. The princess would
sometimes spend the whole afternoon at the villa of Napoleon III's
widow; one year indeed, she and Princess Ena stayed there all through
the winter. Now, on this occasion, I happened to find myself placed in
a very delicate position.
What occurred was this: the princess sent word to me, one day, with the
Empress's consent, inviting me to dinner at the Villa Cyrnos. I was at
first a little perplexed. It seemed to me a rather ticklish matter,
considering my official situation, to figure at the table of the
ex-Empress of the French. On the other hand, to refuse the invitation
seemed tantamount to insulting the daughter of the Queen of England, to
whom I was accredited. At last, I resolved to swallow my scruples and
accepted.
That evening, after dinner, when thanking the Empress for her kindness,
I could not help saying:
"I suppose, Madame, that there are very few officials of the Republic
who would have dared to sit down at Your Majesty's table."
"To be equally frank with you," the Empress at once replied, laughing,
"I will ask you to believe, my dear M. Paoli, that there are also very
few officials of the Republic whom I should have cared to see seated
there like yourself!"
7.
I must not close the story of the periods which I spent with the royal
family at Nice without recalling that, on some of those occasions, I
also met the Marchioness of Lorne, now Duchess of Argyll, and the Duke
of Connaught; but, to tell the truth, I only caught glimpses of them,
because of the shortness of their visits.
I can also only mention quite casually the name of Queen Alexandra, for
the charming lady has never stayed in France for any length of time.
With the exception of two visits of forty-eight hours each, with which
she honoured Paris when she went to France with King Edward, she has
confined herself to passing through our country on her way to Denmark
or to join the royal yacht at Marseilles or Genoa. On each of the
journeys during which I was attached to her person, she gave me every
sign of that captivating and bewitching kindness of which she alone
appears to possess the secret. I also remember perceiving, as do all
those who approach her, the touching affection that unites her to her
sister, the Dowager Empress of Russia. Each time that she left her at
Calais, to go either to Copenhagen or to the south, while the Empress
Marie Feodorovna was returning to St. Petersburg, she never failed to
say to me, in a voice full of anxiety:
"M. Paoli, do take great care of my sister. Watch over her attentively.
I shall not know a moment's peace until I hear that she has arrived at
the end of her journey."
The years have passed and it is not without pride that I reflect upon
the fact that I have known four generations of that glorious royal
family of England!
But, alas, it makes me feel no younger!...
X
THE KING OF CAMBODIA AND HIS DANCING-GIRLS
[Illustration: THE KING OF CAMBODIA]
1.
I propose to conclude this stroll through my royal portrait-gallery
with the entertaining story of the King of Cambodia. He was, so
to speak, my last "client," at least the last of those whom I was
"protecting" for the first time, for he had never set foot in France
when, three years ago, I beheld him, in the bright light of a fine
morning in June, greeting with a loud laugh the port of Marseilles, the
gold-laced officials who had come to receive him, the soldiers, the
sailors, the porters and the regimental band.
For he loved laughing. Hilarity with him was a habit, a necessity; it
burst forth like a flourish of trumpets, it went off like a rocket at
anything or nothing, suddenly lighting up his elderly monkey-face and
revealing amidst the dark smudge that formed his features a dazzling
key-board of ivory teeth.
Sisowath, King of Cambodia, struck me as a little yellow, dry, sinewy
man who had been snowed upon, for amid his hard stubble of shiny black
hairs there gleamed, over the temples, patches of white bristles that
bore witness to his five and sixty summers. He still looked young,
because of the slightness of his figure; and his costume consisted of a
singular miscellany of Cambodian and European garments.
From the knees to the waist, his dress suggested the East. Starting
from the frontier formed by his belt, the West resumed its rights and
set the fashion of the day before yesterday! His feet were clad in
shoes resembling a bishop's, with broad, flat buckles, whence rose
two spindle-shanks confined in black silk stockings and ending in a
queer pair of breeches of a thin, silky, copper-coloured material,
something midway between a cyclist's knickerbockers and a woman's
petticoat and known as the _sampot_, the national dress of Cambodia.
Over these breeches of uncertain cut fell the graceless tails of an
eighteenth-century dress-coat, opening over a shirt-front crossed by
the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honour. Lastly, this astonishing
get-up was topped with a rusty tall hat, dating back to the year 1830,
which crowned the monarch's head.
All this made him look like a carnival-reveller who had come fresh from
a fancy-dress ball. Nevertheless, he took himself very seriously; and
the French government treated him with every consideration, for he
represented a valuable asset in the exercise of our protectorate over
Cambodia.
Those acquainted with the traditions of the Cambodian court will know
that, in consenting to leave his realms for a time in order to go to
France, he had broken every religious and political law. To appease the
just wrath of Buddha and relieve his own conscience, before leaving his
capital, Pnom-Penh, he had sent magnificent offerings to the tombs of
the KneKne kings, bathed in lustral water prepared by the prayers of
sixty-seven bonzes, invoked the emerald statue of the god Berdika and
accepted at the hands of the chief Brahmin a leaf of scented amber, by
way of a lucky charm.
It was really impossible to surround himself with more potent
safeguards and he had every reason to be in a good humour, although
he had flown into a great rage on the passage at seeing his suite
abandoning themselves to the tortures of sea-sickness:
"I forbid you to be sick!" he shouted to them. "Those are my orders: am
I the King or am I not?"
Distracted by the impossibility of obeying, they took refuge in the
depths of the steamer and did not reappear on deck until the ship
approached the Straits of Messina. And the saddened sovereign was made
to realise for the first time that he was not omnipotent. The fact
made so great an impression on his mind that, from that time forward,
he became excessively and almost inconveniently polite. He shook hands
with everybody he saw, beginning with the flunkeys at the Marseilles
Prefecture, who lined the staircase as he went upstairs.
2.
Keen as was the interest taken by the public in Sisowath, it paled
before the curiosity aroused by his dancing-girls. They formed an
integral part of that extraordinary royal suite, in which figured three
of his ministers, four of his sons, his daughter, two sons of King
Norodom, his predecessor, and eleven favourites accompanied by a swarm
of chamberlains, ladies of the bed-chamber and pages: women old and
young, at whose breasts hung hideous little stunted, yellow, shrieking
imps, from whom they had refused to be separated.
On the other hand, amid the disorder of that oriental horde, the
_corps de ballet_ constituted a caste apart, haughty, sacerdotal and
self-contained. The twenty dancers came to France preceded by a great
reputation for beauty. It may have been the result of beholding them in
a different setting, under a different sky; but this much is certain,
that they did not appear to me in the same light in which they had
been depicted to us by enthusiastic travellers.
Sisowath's dancing-girls are not exactly pretty, judged by our own
standard of feminine beauty. With their hard and close-cropped hair,
their figures like those of striplings, their thin, muscular legs
like those of young boys, their arms and hands like those of little
girls, they seem to belong to no definite sex. They have something
of the child about them, something of the young warrior of antiquity
and something of the woman. Their usual dress, which is half feminine
and half masculine, consisting of the famous _sampot_ worn in creases
between their knees and their hips and of a silk shawl confining their
shoulders, crossed over the bust and knotted at the loins, tends to
heighten this curious impression. But in the absence of beauty, they
possess grace, a supple, captivating, royal grace, which is present in
their every attitude and gesture; they have a perfume of fabled legend
to accompany them, the sacred character of their functions to ennoble
them; lastly, they have their dances full of mystery and majesty and
art, their dances which have been handed down faithfully in the course
of the ages and whose every movement, whose every deft curve remains
inscribed on the bas-reliefs of the ruins of Ankor. For these reasons,
they are beautiful, with the special beauty that clings to remote,
inscrutable and fragile things.
They are all girls of good extraction, for it is an honour much sought
after by the noble families of Cambodia to have a child admitted to the
King's troop of dancers. Contrary to what has sometimes been asserted,
the dancing-girls do not form part of the royal harem; they are
considered a sort of vestals; virginal and radiant, they perform, in
dancing, a more or less religious rite; and this is the only pleasure
which they provide for their sovereign lord the King.
When they accompanied Sisowath to France, they were under the
management of the King's own eldest daughter, the Princess Soumphady,
an ugly, cross-grained old maid who ruled them with an iron hand. The
"stars" were four principal dancers whose names seemed to have been
picked, like the King's leaves of scented amber, in some sacred grove
of Buddha's mysterious realm: they were called Mesdemoiselles Mih, Pho,
Nuy and Pruong.
3.
When the whole party were landed, they had to be put up; and this was
no easy matter. The Marseilles Prefecture was hardly large enough to
house the King's fabulous and cumbrous retinue. We distributed its
members over some of the neighbouring houses; but they spent their days
at the Prefecture, which was then and there transformed into the camp
of an Asiatic caravan. The ante-rooms and passages were blocked with
pieces of luggage each quainter than the other. Heaped up promiscuously
were jewel-cases, dress-trunks, cases of opium, bales of rice and sacks
of coal, for the Cambodians, fearing lest they should fail to find in
Europe the coal which they use to cook their rice, had insisted, at all
costs, on bringing with them two-hundred sacks, which now lay trailing
about upon the Smyrna rugs!
When, on the evening of his arrival, I pushed my way through this
medley of incongruous baggage, to present myself to the King, of whom I
had caught but a passing glimpse on the Marseilles quays, M. Gautret,
the colonial administrator who had travelled with our guests, said to
me:
"His Majesty is at dinner, but wishes to see you. Come this way."
Shall I ever forget that audience? Sisowath sat at a large table,
surrounded by his family, his ministers, his favourites and his
dancing-girls, while, squatting in a corner on the floor, were
half-a-dozen musicians--His Majesty's private band--scraping away like
mad on frail-sounding instruments. The King was eating salt-fish which
had been prepared for him by his own cooks. He was the only one to
use a knife and fork. The others did not care for such luxuries; at
intervals, a waiter handed round a large gold bowl filled with rice,
into which ministers, favourites, and dancing-girls dipped their hands,
subsequently transferring the contents to their mouths.
When M. Gautret had mentioned my name and explained the nature of my
functions, the King, who was gloating over his loathsome fish, looked
up, gave me his hand and, with his everlasting noisy laugh, flung me a
few vapid monosyllables:
"Glad ... Friend ... Long live France!"
Our conversation went on no further on that day. The next morning, we
visited together the sights of Marseilles and its Colonial Exhibition.
Sisowath, though very loquacious, was astonished at nothing, or at
least pretended not to be. His dancers and favourites, on the other
hand, were astonished at everything. They pawed the red-silk chairs
for ever so long before venturing to sit upon the extreme edge, so
great was their fear of spoiling them: most often, after a preliminary
hesitation, they would end by settling down upon the floor, where they
felt more at home. And yet they were not devoid of tact, as they showed
when I took them, at the King's wish, to see the fine church of Notre
Dame de la Garde, which, from the top of its rock, commands a view of
the city, the surrounding country and the sea. They wanted to go up to
the sanctuary and entered it with the same respectful demeanour which
they would have displayed in the most sacred of their own pagodas. When
we explained to them that the thousands of ex-votos which adorn the
walls of the chapel represent so many tokens of pious gratitude, their
eyes, like the King of Thule's, filled with tears and they suddenly
prostrated themselves just as they might have done before the images of
their own Buddhas.
During this time, the King, who had fished out a pair of white gloves
and a white tie and adorned his _sampot_ with an emerald belt, stood
smiling at the Marseillaise, which was being performed in his honour,
and, as I afterwards heard, smiling at the fair _Marseillese_ as well.
Until then, I had enjoyed but a foretaste of the life and manners of
the Cambodian Court. The stay which Sisowath and his suite were about
to make in Paris was to enlighten me on this subject for good and all.
After three days' driving through the streets of Marseilles, the royal
caravan set out for the capital, where the French government had
resolved to give it an official reception and to entertain it at the
expense of the nation. With this object in view, the government had
hired a private house in the Avenue Malakoff and prudently furnished it
from the national depository with chairs and tables "that need fear no
damage."
Meanwhile, the Colonial Office had appointed me superintendent-in-chief
of this novel "palace" and I had to take up my abode there during the
whole of our royal guest's stay. The result was that, during the three
weeks which I spent amid these picturesque surroundings, I enjoyed all
the attractions of the most curiously exotic life that could possibly
be imagined.
The bed-room allotted to me opened upon the passage containing the
King's apartments; so that I may be said to have occupied a front seat
at the permanent and delicious entertainment provided by the Cambodian
court for the benefit of those admitted to its privacy.
What struck me first of all was the indiscreet familiarity of His
Majesty's family and favourites. Princes, ministers and favourites,
spent their lives in the passages and walked in and out of my room with
an astonishing absence of constraint and in the airiest of costumes. If
I happened to be at home, they paid no attention to my presence: they
explored the room, poked about in the corners, tried the springs of my
bed, asked me for cigarettes, examined my brushes and combs, smiled
and went away. When I was out, they entered just the same, emptied my
cigar and cigarette-boxes, sat down on my carpet and exchanged remarks
that may have been jocular for all I know: I never found out.
Anxious to avoid any sort of friction, I made no complaint. I contented
myself with locking up my personal belongings and replacing my boxes of
Havanas with boxes of penny cigars; but my plunderers held different
views; the ladies, especially, who had learnt to distinguish between
good cigars and common "_Sénateurs_" expressed their rage and vexation
with violent gestures and resolved thenceforth to give me the cold
shoulder--which was more than I had hoped for.
There remained another drawback to which I had, willy-nilly to submit
until the end. It consisted of Sisowath's unpleasant habit of walking
up and down the passages at night, talking and laughing with his
suite, while his orchestra tinkled out the "national" airs to an
accompaniment of tambourines and cymbals and while the brats kept
crying and squalling, notwithstanding the efforts of their mothers, who
put lighted cigarettes between the children's lips to make them stop.
It was simply maddening; and, when I tried to make a discreet protest,
I was told that, as His Majesty took a siesta during the day, he had no
need for sleep at night. The argument admitted of no reply and I had
to accept the inevitable.
On the other hand, I enjoyed a few compensations. I was invited, from
time to time, to assist at the King's toilet when he donned his gala
clothes to go to an official dinner or a ceremony of one kind or
another. After he had finished his ablutions--for he was always very
particular about his person--his wives proceeded to dress him. They
helped him into a gorgeous green and gold _sampot_ and a brocaded tunic
and put round his throat a sort of necklace resembling the gorget of
a coat of mail and made of dull gold set with precious stones, ending
at the shoulders in two sheets of gold that stuck out on either side
like wings. They next girt his waist, arms and ankles with a belt and
bracelets encrusted with exquisite gems. Lastly, they took away his
rusty and antiquated old "topper" and gave him in exchange a wide
Cambodian felt hat, surmounted by a kind of three-storied tower running
into a point, adorned with gold chasings and literally paved with
diamonds and emeralds. Thus attired, Sisowath looked very grand: he
resembled the statue of a Hindoo god removed from its pagoda.
Nevertheless, western civilisation began stealthily to exert its
formidable influence over his tastes, if not his habits. We had not
been a week in Paris before our guest thought it better, on his
afternoon excursions, to replace the _sampot_ with the conventional
European trousers and his out-of-date cutaway with a faultless
frock-coat. But for his yellow complexion, his slanting eyes and his
woolly hair, he would have looked a regular dandy!
Ever eager to appear good-natured and polite, he kissed the daughters
of the hall-porter at the Colonial Office, each time he went to the
Pavillion de Flore, and shook hands with the messengers at the Foreign
Office and with all the salesmen at the Bon Marché, which he made a
point of visiting. Again, when passing through the Place Victor-Hugo,
he never failed to take off his hat with a great flourish to our
national poet. Lastly, I had the greatest difficulty in keeping him
from sending sacred offerings to the tomb of Napoleon I, "whom we hold
in veneration in Cambodia," he explained to me through the interpreter.
Hearing, on the other hand, that European sovereigns are accustomed to
leave their cards on certain official personages, he asked me to order
him a hundred worded as follows:
PREAS BAT SOMDACH PREAS SISOWATH CHOM CHAKREPONGS.
4.
Nevertheless, in spite of the ever fresh surprises which Paris had in
store for him and of their undoubted attraction for his mind, the King
soon began to feel a certain lassitude:
"Paris," he said to me, "is a wonderful, but tiring city. The houses
are too high and there are too many carriages. How is it that you still
allow horse-carriages? If I were the master here, I would abolish them
and allow nothing but motors."
When he had visited the public buildings and done the sights and been
to Fontainebleau and Versailles and Compiègne and had the mechanism of
the phonographs and cinematographs explained to him he began to bore
himself. He then thought of his dancing-girls, whom he had left behind
at Marseilles, and sent for them to Paris on the pretext of exhibiting
them at a garden-party given by the president of the republic at the
Élysée. One fine morning, they all landed at the Gare de Lyon, a little
bewildered, a little flurried, in the charge of the grim Princess
Soumphady, who was dressed in a violet _sampot_, with a stream of
diamonds round her neck. They arrived looking like so many lost sheep,
accompanied by their six readers, their eight singers, their four
dressers, their two comedians and their six musicians.
The dancers' advent created quite a sensation in the district of the
Avenue Malakoff. They were quartered opposite the royal "palace," in
a building at the back of a courtyard, and, when at last good King
Sisowath saw them from his balcony, a broad smile of happiness lit up
his yellow face.
They rehearsed their ballets every morning in a large room that did
duty as a theatre. I was allowed to look on, as a special favour, and
I was thus able to watch pretty closely those curious and amazingly
artistic little creatures and their dances.