THE KING OF CAMBODIA AND HIS DANCING-GIRLS

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:

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.

Their ballets always began with a musical prelude performed upon brass and bamboo instruments. Then, while some of the women struck up a religious chant and others clapped their hands in measured time, the dancers left the group one by one, shooting out and meeting in the ring; and a regular fanciful, childish drama was suggested by their movements, their gestures and their attitudes, which contrasted strangely with the sacerdotal repose of their features. They looked, at one time, like large, living flowers; at another, like automatic dolls.

The dances provided an odd medley of Moorish and Spanish steps. Sometimes, the stomach would sway to and fro, as though one were watching a dance of Egyptian almes; at other times, the legs quivered and the dancer stamped her feet, raised her arms, jerked her hips as though she meant to give us some Andalusian jota or habanera. And in those faces, which seemed inanimate beneath their fixed smiles, nothing allowed the inner feelings of the soul to penetrate: yet what suggestive mimicry was there, what harmonious poses and what marvellous costumes!

The Cambodian ballet-girls, when dancing in public, wear clothes that are simply fairy-like. They have bodices of silk stitched with gold and adorned with precious stones. These bodices are very heavy and are fitted upon them and sewn before each performance, so they form as it were a new skin and reveal with a clearness that is nothing short of impressive the slightest undulations of the body.

The dressers take two or three hours to clothe the dancers, after which they paint the girls' faces and deck them out with bracelets, necklaces and rings of priceless value. Sometimes also the dancers' fingers are slipped into long, bent, golden claws, which describe harmonious curves in space.

Lastly, the head-dress consists of either the traditional pnom—a sort of pointed hat, all of gold and fastened on by clutches that grip the head—or a wreath of enormous flowers, or else of a pale-tinted silk handkerchief rolled low over the temples.

The dancers and their dances achieved, as may be imagined, no small success, first at the ElysÉe and afterwards in the Bois de Boulogne, where a gala performance was given, in the open-air theatre of the PrÉ Catelan, by the light of the electric lamps. Between whiles, they took drives through Paris, which gave rise to all sorts of astonished and enthusiastic manifestations on their part, much to the delight of their guides; for they had the mental attitude of little girls and, when, after a week, they had to go back to Marseilles, where they formed the principal attraction at the Colonial Exhibition, their despair was something immense. It was as much as we could do to console them by presenting them all with mechanical rabbits and unbreakable dolls.

And the King, once more, was bored. He was so thoroughly bored that, a few days after the departure of his ballet-girls, he resolved to go and spend a couple of days at Nancy, in order to see a dozen or two young Cambodians who had been attending the local industrial school for the last twelve-month. The organising of this visit was very troublesome, for the King had acquired a taste for military display and insisted upon being received at Nancy with full honours, such as he had been used to in Paris. Worse still, the trip very nearly ended in disaster, entirely through Sisowath's own fault.

The inhabitants of Nancy, amused and delighted by the show of Oriental luxury that met their eyes, gave the King an enthusiastic ovation far in excess of his expectations. His gratitude was such that, on the evening of his arrival, he took it into his head to manifest his delight by flinging handfuls of silver through the windows of the Prefecture to the crowd that stood cheering him on the Place Stanislas! The reader can picture the effect of this beneficent shower. Suddenly, loud cries and shouts were heard and a regular battle was fought in front of the Prefecture, for one and all wished to profit by the royal largesse.

I at once rushed up to the King and begged him to stop this dangerous game. But Sisowath, who was madly diverted by the sight, positively refused to yield to my entreaties. He even asked to have a thousand-franc note changed for gold.

Seeing that persuasion was of no avail, I took a quick and bold resolve. I had him removed from the window by force, undeterred by the insults with which he overwhelmed me in the Cambodian tongue.

But I had not yet come to the end of my emotions: a serio-comic incident followed apace. Sisowath, suddenly evading the watchfulness of my inspectors, who dared not detain him like a common malefactor, escaped, darted down the stairs, four steps at a time, opened a window on the ground floor and, with hoarse cries, began to fling into the square all the louis d'or which he had in his possession. The moment he heard us coming, quick as lightning he was off and flew to another window. For a quarter of an hour, a mad steeple-chase was kept up through all the rooms of the Prefecture, amid the roars of the excited crowd in the streets.

Fortunately, the King soon grew tired and accepted his defeat. As for me, I naturally looked upon my disgrace as assured. But Sisowath, thank goodness, was not vindictive. The next morning, he gave me his hand and, bursting into loud laughter, contented himself with saying:

"Very funny!"

5.

A week later, he took ship at Marseilles, with his court, to return to Cambodia. When I said good-bye to him on the deck of the steamer, he appeared heart-broken at having to leave our country. Heart-broken, too, seemed the little dancing-girls squatting at the foot of the mast, with their mechanical rabbits and their unbreakable dolls—the last keepsake to remind them of their stay in Paris—which they squeezed fondly in their arms.

When, at length, the hour of parting had struck, good King Sisowath, greatly moved, called me to his side:

"Here," he said. "Present for you."

And he handed me a parcel done up in a pink-silk handkerchief.

As soon as I was on shore, I hastened to open it; to my great confusion, it contained a splendid sampot made of fine cloth of gold. The King of Cambodia had presented me with his state breeches, which were all that remained to me of my last "client" and of my Oriental dreams!

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