CHAPTER LXXX
SAIGON
The smell of earth reached us already, as well as the perfume of amber and tropical flowers. We are in Cochin-China, in fairy-like decorations. I thought myself in dreamland and had to pinch myself to be sure I was awake.
The town of Saigon, buried in banyan and palm trees, is a city of splendid wonders. The French colours floated everywhere. Small omnibuses harnessed with a Malay pony were waiting under the banyan trees on the quay. An aide-de-camp of the Governor-General of Cochin-China invited us, in the name of his chief, to put up at his house, but we preferred to drive independently to the Grand Hôtel, and mounted an omnibus drawn by a Liliputian pony, with a native coachman on the box, dressed in white linen with a red turban. We drove through streets that tried to be French, and boulevards surrounded by mimosas and laurel trees. All Saigon sleeps between the hours of two and five. The houses of commerce are closed and every business stops. Most of the window-shades were down, and there was no sign of life in the streets; we only saw a man sleeping in an angle of a wall, flies above his head. It seemed a very long drive to the Grand Hôtel. The coachman, to whom we had explained ourselves in a language of signs, didn’t understand where we wanted to go, and instead of driving us to the Grand Hôtel he brought us to the Botanic Gardens, through long alleys of red sand. Once we were at the door of the gardens, we decided to visit them, though it wasn’t at all an afternoon pastime in such awful heat. In this tropical land, one of the hottest on the globe, there are often cases of sunstroke amongst the Europeans. As to the natives, they are accustomed to receive the caresses of the hot rays of the sun, which is at its zenith in these parts.
On our way back to the hotel we saw the statue of Gambetta on the square. The fancy of the sculptor has attired the great man in a fur-lined coat, which looks rather queer in this country, where everyone would prefer to be completely deprived of clothes.
A spacious gallery with hermetically closed shutters stretches the whole length of our hotel. Directly after tiffin we went up to our apartment and indulged in a pleasant siesta. I was awfully thirsty, taking up a decanter to pour out a glass of water, what was my horror to find a drowned scorpion at the bottom of it. It was enough to disgust you of the Tropics for ever! I rang the bell and my summons were quickly answered by a barefooted Annamite boy, with nothing but a bit of stuff wrapped round his loins. I pointed out to him, with an indignant gesture, the contents of the decanter, trying by an expressive gesture to let him see all my disgust, but the boy didn’t appear shocked, he only grinned, showing his shining teeth from ear to ear. When going to bed I looked in and underneath the bed for relatives of the drowned scorpion and have discovered an enormous tarantula on my mosquito-net. The whole night swarms of noisy lizards crawled round the walls and on the ceiling, making a very disagreeable concert. I was expecting them to come down upon my head all the time. The lizards are generally quite inoffensive, except a dangerous species called “to-que,” according to the sound they produce. Before putting on our boots in the morning we looked inside, lest a scorpion may be lying in ambush.
My husband was invited to dinner by the General-Governor, Mr. Prévost, together with the Resident of Kambodge. The Palace is closed nearly all the year round, because Mr. Prévost inhabits Hanoi-in-Tonkin. He is passing now through Saigon on his way to Europe, on a holiday. I dined comfortably with Mrs. Serebriakoff at a private table by an open window. After the repast, we settled ourselves at a little table on the boulevard, reminding one of the Paris boulevards, with well-dressed white men sitting at small tables, smoking, drinking syrups and eating ices; only instead of white-aproned Parisian waiters, it is Chinese boys, resembling women with their long white robes and tresses hanging down their backs, who serve the customers. We sat contemplating the movements of the crowd on the boulevard, full of Europeanised negro swells, Hindoos with a cast-mark on their forehead, and officers of the French army. Two French regiments and two Annamite battalions are quartered at Saigon. The Annamite soldiers are barefooted and wear straw hats of conical form. There is no cavalry in Cochin-China, because horses, except Annamite ponies, cannot stand the climate.
Mr. Prévost had invited my husband and his suite to share his box at the opera, which was “Faust.” We saw their carriage stop before the theatre just in front of the boulevard. We could hear the sound of our Anthem and the Marseillaise, played by a military band in the garden belonging to the theatre, and the clapping of hands and bravoes. Between the acts the little tables on the boulevard were taken by storm by the audience, and rapidly abandoned at the moment when an Annamite boy began to run up and down the boulevard ringing the bell, which was to be the signal for the beginning of the following act.
A guard of honour was placed this morning at the entrance-door of our hotel, in honour of my husband. The French soldiers were replaced in the afternoon by Annamite warriors, who grasped their guns and saluted Sergy as he passed them and presented arms. After tiffin Mr. Rousseau called upon us with his son. They are going to sail with us as far as Singapore. Before dinner Sergy went to visit the barracks with General Corona, the chief of the troops. The soldiers, locked up for punishment, were set free to commemorate my husband’s inspection of the barracks.
At nightfall we went on board the Melbourne, and saw on the upper deck a great number of French officers who had come to wish Mr. Rousseau a happy voyage.