The most amusing incident was that which happened on the occasion of an experiment with radium. I had described to the sovereign, in the course of conversation, the wonderful discovery which our great savant, M. Currie, had just made, a discovery that was called upon to revolutionise science. The Shah was extremely interested by my story and repeatedly expressed a desire to be shown the precious magic stone. Professor Currie was informed accordingly, and, in spite of his stress of work, agreed to come to the Élysée Palace Hôtel and give an exhibition. As, however, complete darkness was needed for radium to be admired in all its brilliancy, I had with endless trouble persuaded the King of Kings to come down to one of the hotel cellars arranged for the purpose. At the appointed time, His Majesty and all his suite proceeded to the underground apartment in question. Professor Currie closed the door, switched off the electric light and uncovered his specimen of radium, when, suddenly, a shout of terror, resembling at one and the same time the roar of a bull and the yells of a man who is being murdered, rang out, followed by hundreds of similar cries. Amid general excitement and consternation, we flung ourselves upon the electric switches, turned on the lights and beheld a strange sight: in the midst of the prostrate Persians stood the Shah, his arms clinging to the neck of his howling grand vizier, his round pupils dilated to their rims, while he shouted at the top of his voice, in Persian:
"Come away! Come away!"
The switching on of the light calmed this mad anguish as though by magic. Realising the disappointment which he had caused M. Currie, he tried to offer him a decoration by way of compensation; but the austere man of science thought right to decline it.
The instinctive dread of darkness and solitude was so keen in the Persian monarch that he required his bed-room to be filled during the night with light and sound. Accordingly, every evening, as soon as he had lain down and closed his eyes, the members of his suite gathered round his bed, lit all the candelabra and exchanged their impressions aloud, while young nobles of the court, relieving one another in pairs, conscientiously patted his arms and legs with little light, sharp, regular taps. The King of Kings imagined that he was in this way keeping death at a distance, if perchance it should take a fancy to visit him in his sleep, and the extraordinary thing is that he did sleep, notwithstanding all this massage, light and noise.
4.
The need which he felt of having people constantly around him and of reproducing the atmosphere of his distant country wherever he fixed his temporary residence was reflected in the picturesque and singularly animated aspect which the hotel or palace at which he elected to stay assumed soon after his installation. It was promptly transformed into a vast, exotic caravanserai, presenting the appearance of a French fair combined with that of an eastern bazaar. The house was taken possession of by its new occupants from the kitchens, ruled over by the Persian master-cook who prepared the monarch's dishes, to the attics, where the inferior servants were accommodated. One saw nothing but figures in dark tunics and astrakhan caps, squatting in the passages, leaning over the staircases; along the corridors and in the halls, the shopkeepers had improvised stalls as at Teheran, in the hope that the monarch would let fall from his august lips in passing the "Je prends" that promised wealth. In the uncouth crowd which the desire of provoking and hearing that blessed phrase attracted to the waiting-rooms of the hotel, all the professions rubbed shoulders promiscuously; curiosity-dealers, unsuccessful inventors, collectors of autographs and postage-stamps, ruined financiers, charlatans, unknown artists, women of doubtful character.
Their numbers had increased so greatly, on the faith of the legend that the Shah's treasures were inexhaustible, that a radical step had to be taken: when Muzaffr-ed-Din returned to Paris in 1902 and 1905, the applicants for favours were forbidden to resume their little manœuvre. Thereupon they changed their tactics: they sat down and wrote.
I have kept these letters, which the Shah never read and which his secretary handed me regularly, without having read them either. They arrived by each post in shoals. One could easily make a volume of them which would provide psychologists with a very curious study of the human soul and mind. Among those poor letters are many obscure, touching, comic, candid and cynical specimens; some also are absurd; others imprudent or sad. Most of them are signed; and among the signatures of these requests for assistance are names which one is surprised to find there. I must be permitted to suppress these names and to limit myself, in this mad orgie of epistolary literature, to reproducing the most typical of the letters that fell under my eyes.
First, a few specimens of "the comic note:"