Twice a week I went to taste Ceylon tea; the Ceylon pavilion was, if I remember correctly, on the heights of the Trocadéro, on the right as you go up, near the paulownias which bear mauve flowers before they have leaves.
All this hill was nothing but perfumes, incense, vanilla, smoked pastilles from the seraglio; you could hear the scraping of the Chinese violins, the resonance of the rattlesnakes, the moaning of the flutes of Arabic music, the howl of mystical pain of the Aïssaouas more made up than Max, the cry of the Ouled Naïl with their mobile stomachs; this opiate mixture, this scent of Javanese dancers, sorbets, rahat-locoum, I followed him to the Dahomean village.
Among the mosques, straw huts, near the Tower of Sacrifices, circulated barefoot, with a proud and harmonious bearing, tall Negroes, still savages, subjects of former kings, old or recent enemies who had become our liege men; the women of this Chari-Oubangui, which we were in the process of conquering, pounded millet and groundnuts.
It was at the Trocadéro that I understood the greatness of the work that Gallieni and Lyautey were completing in Madagascar, of the recent creation of the government of French West Africa and Indochina, of the effort of Jules Cambon in Algeria, of all that France had accomplished in less than fifty years. This did not prevent the extreme left in the Chamber from denouncing at this very moment the "Moroccan adventure", that is to say the conquest of the Moroccan borders, that is to say the first stage of the occupation of Morocco...
Ascending as far as the walls of the Trocadéro, I discovered Russian Asia; nothing was fresher to the eye than these white and green fortified monasteries, topped with bulbous, golden steeples, and an Orthodox cross from which hung chains.
The real highlight of the Exhibition, for me, was, behind this decor, the Trans-Siberian train. This Trans-Siberian would be finished in a few months; you could go around the world in thirty-three days. In this wagon-bed-lounge, one entered through a door which was still Russia with its luxury:crystal tables from the Urals, onyx services, slabs of unknown marble; the Kremlin brass bands played Boje Tsara Krani.
All the furs, from Amur to Finland, were exhibited there:beavers from Kamchatka, otters from the Otter Society, seals, red foxes and the skins of these large Nordic tigers with almost white hair, alongside which the tigers of the tropics are only alley cats.
We sat down; immediately the train left. I mean that in front of the glass of the motionless wagon the painted landscape unfolded; we crossed the great rivers strewn with driftwood, the forests of pines and larches, the deserts from which emerged the Mongolian tombs.
The Russian government had reproduced on this canvas many gold mines and precious metals, to give confidence to the French capitalists. We ate all kinds of zakouski, while these desperate plains, crossed long ago by the Tartar warriors and the Novigodians merchants of sable.
Suddenly (it is enough for me to close my eyes for a moment to find to my surprise) the muzhik on duty disappeared, and it was a Chinese waiter, in a blue silk robe, bringing tea flavored with jasmine, from a small porcelain cup.
Beijing, everyone get down!
We then got out of the car to find ourselves magically transported to the other b of the world, at the foot of one of the Beijing gates, with a horned roof.
Anyway, the weather is better here, di:uncle. Things are heating up there at the moment
General Voyron, a friend of my family who commanded the French expeditionary force, had just left for Peking, we were following all the phases of the dance of the legations invested by Boxers (which I imagined myself fighting has boxing gloves).
They are terrible demons!
Not at all. They are nationalists like the others.
This is what Yellow Asia evoked for me, in the first stifling days of the heat wave, as it climbed to attack the torrid Trocadéro. (Around 1900, the hi's were freezing and the summers scorching.)
It was the time when sovereigns on holiday arrived at the Exhibition; the King of Belgium, King Aguibou, the Prince Royal of Greece, King Oscar of Sweden, Queen Wilhelmi, the King of Ethiopia, the Khedive, Archduke Frederick...
Mr. Leygues, to astonish the Persian shah, this sovereign who, on his arrival at the Hôtel des Deux Mondes, had found in his mail 554 letters from Parisians offering their services, took him to see camels:
I have nine thousand in my stables answered this one.