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Here is the residence of His Majesty Prea Bat Samdach Prea Sisowath, King of Cambodia; here dwell the twelve score dancing-girls of the famous royal ballet and the hundreds of concubines and attendants comprising the royal harem; here are the stables of the royal elephants and the sacred zebus; here a congeries of palaces, pavilions, throne halls, dance halls, temples, shrines, kiosks, monuments, courtyards, and gardens the like of which is not to be found outside the covers of The Thousand and One Nights.
Ziegfeld's carefully selected beauties, however, who frequently find the stage a stepping-stone to independence and a limousine, the Cambodian show-girl, once she enters the service of the King, becomes to all intents and purposes a prisoner. And Sisowath, for all his eighty-odd years, is a jealous master.
Though the octogenarian King Sisowath maintains a gorgeous court, a stable of elephants, upwards of two-hundred dancing-girls, and one of the most ornate palaces in Asia, he is permitted only a shadow of power, the real ruler of Cambodia being the French Resident-Superior, who governs the country from the great white Residency on the banks of the Mekong.
It is a veritable cave of Al-ed-Din. The covers of these cases are sealed with strips of paper bearing the royal cypher nothing more. They have never been locked nor guarded, yet nothing has ever been stolen, for King Sisowath is to his subjects something more than a ruler; he is venerated as the representative of God on earth.
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