My real kingdom will be the Trocadéro.
First the aquarium, with sea water
brought from Trouville, the aquarium whose
seahorses, says Jules Renard, stand as straight as tie pins. We see all sorts of tropical fish that take your breath away, others that circulate between the ropes of a silted up wreck.
I spend my days in this Arab, Negro, Polynesian city, which goes from the Eiffel Tower to Passy, a gentle Parisian hill suddenly carrying on its back Africa, Asia, the immense universe of which I dream.
My decision is made:later, I will prepare the Naval Academy! Every corner of the Trocadero is familiar to me, the Tunisian bazaar where we smoke h hookah while watching dancers, h stereorama, the kasbah, the white minarets all surprised to be reflected in the Seine, stuffed African animals, the Indochina pavilion varnished with red gum with its sculptures painted by Annamites in black robes, and its golden dragons.
I make a thousand extraordinary journeys without moving, like Des Esseintes; under the Eiffel Tower, near the small lake, hides the Tonkinese village, with its junks and its betel-chewing women; sometimes I watch the old Cambodian elephant sent by Doumer, whose name is Chérie, drink there. The Indochinese theater is next to the reproduction of this strange temple which we have just discovered and which is called Angkor...