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.