At the time of his first stay in Paris, he had the privilege of inaugurating the famous Sovereigns' Palace, which the government had fitted up in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne for the entertainment of its royal visitors. The house was a comparatively small one; on the other hand, it was sumptuously decorated. The national furniture-repository had sent some of the finest pieces to be found in its historic store-rooms. In fact, I believe that the Shah slept in the bed of Napoleon I and washed his hands and face in the Empress Marie-Louise's basin; things that interested him but little.

Great memories were a matter of indifference to him; he infinitely preferred futile realities in the form of useless objects, whose glitter pleased his eye, and of more or less harmonious sounds, whose vibrations tickled his ears.

His tastes were proved on the day of his arrival by two quick decisions: he ordered to be packed up for Teheran the grand piano which adorned his drawing-room and the motor-car which awaited his good pleasure outside, after hearing the one, trying the other and lavishly paying for both. He would not be denied.

His amazement was great when he visited the exhibition for the first time. The wonderful cosmopolitan city that seemed to have leapt into existence in the space of one of the thousand and one nights of the Persian legend stirred his eastern imagination, strive though he might to conceal the fact. The splendour of the exotic display exercised an irresistible attraction upon him; the glass-cases of jewellery also fascinated his gaze, although he himself, doubtless without realising it, was a perambulating shop-window which any jeweller might have longed to possess. On his long Persian tunic with its red edges and ample skirts creased with folds he wore a regular display of precious stones and one did not know which to admire the most, the gleaming sapphires that adorned his shoulder-straps, the splendid emeralds, the exquisite turquoises that studded the baldrick and the gold scabbard of his sword, the four enormous rubies that took the place of the buttons of his uniform, or the dazzling and formidable diamond, the famous Daria-Nour, the Sea of Light, fastened on to his Khola, the traditional head-dress, whence jutted like a fountain of light a quivering aigrette in brilliants. Thus decked out, Muzaffr-ed-Din was valued at thirty-four million francs net; and even then he was far from carrying the whole of his fortune upon his person: I have in fact been assured that, in the depths of the iron trunk of which four vigilant Persians had the keeping, there slumbered an equal number of precious stones, no less fine than the others and content to undergo the rigour of a temporary disgrace. At all events, in the guise in which he showed himself in public, he was enough to excite the admiring curiosity of the crowds.

In his solemn walks through the various sections of the exhibition, where my modest frock-coat looked drab and out of place among the glittering uniforms, he was attended by the grand vizier, the only dignitary entitled, by the etiquette of the Persian court, to carry a cane in the presence of his sovereign, who himself always leant upon a stick made of some precious wood. He was invariably followed by a grave and attentive Persian carrying a hand-bag. This person puzzled me at first. His fellow-countrymen treated him with respect and addressed him in deferential tones. I had concluded from this that he filled some lofty function or other and felt the more justified in so thinking as the Shah from time to time made him a little sign, whereupon, promptly, all three-the Shah, the Persian and the hand-bag-disappeared for a few moments into a dark corner. However, I soon learnt that these mysterious meetings had no political significance: the Persian was merely a confidential body-servant; as for the hand-bag, it held simply the most homely and the most intimate of all the world's utensils and the Shah was frequently obliged to have recourse to it. This little drawback, however, did not damp his eagerness to know, to see and to buy things. He bought everything indifferently: musical instruments, old tapestries, a set of table-cutlery, a panorama, a "new-art" ring, a case of pistols. He looked, touched, weighed the thing in his hand and then, raising his forefinger, said, "Je prends," while the delighted exhibitor, greatly touched and impressed, took down the order and the address.

Nevertheless, Muzaffr-ed-Din was not so rich as one would be inclined to think. Each time, in fact, that he came to Europe, where he spent fabulous sums, he procured the money needed for his journey, not only by raising a loan, generally in Russia, but also by a method which was both ingenious and businesslike. Before leaving his possessions, he summoned his chief officers of State-ministers, provincial governors and the like-and proposed the following bargain to them: those who wished to form part of his suite must first pay him a sum of money which he valued in accordance with the importance of their functions. It varied between 50,000 and 300,000 francs. In return, he authorised them to recoup themselves for this advance in any way they pleased. Here we find the explanation of the large number of persons who accompanied the Shah on his travels and the quaint and unexpected titles which they bore, such as that of "minister of the dockyard," though Persia has never owned a navy, and one still more extraordinary, that of "attorney to the heir apparent." Although they sometimes had romantic souls, they invariably had terribly practical minds. Eager to recover as quickly as possible the outlay to which their ambition to behold the West had induced them to consent, they practised on a huge scale and without scruple or hesitation what I may describe as the bonus or commission system. Notwithstanding my long experience of human frailties, I confess that this proceeding, cynically raised by these gentlemen to the level of an institution, upset all my notions, while it explained how the Shah was able to spend eight to twelve million francs in pocket-money on each of his trips to France.

As soon as the people about him knew what shops His Majesty proposed to visit in the course of his daily drive, a bevy of courtiers would swoop down upon the awestruck tradesman and imperiously insist upon his promising them a big commission, in exchange for which they undertook to prevail upon His Majesty graciously to honour the establishment with his custom. The shopkeeper as a rule raised no objection; he was quite content to increase the price in proportion; and, when the good Shah, accompanied by his vizier and the famous hand-bag, presented himself a few hours later in the shop, his suite praised the goods of the house so heartily that he never failed to let fall the traditional phrase, "Je prends," so as to give no one even the slightest pain. Nor, for that matter, did any of those who surrounded him dream of making a secret of the traffic in which he indulged behind his sovereign's back: it was a right duly acquired and paid for.

I am bound to say, however, that the grand vizier-no doubt because he was already too well-off-appeared to be above these sordid and venial considerations. This important personage, whose name on that occasion was His Highness the Sadrazani Mirza Ali Asghar Khan Emin es Sultan, combined an acute understanding with a superior cast of mind; the Shah showed him a very noteworthy affection and treated him as a friend. These marks of special kindness were due to curious causes, which an amiable Persian was good enough to reveal to me. It appears that, when the late Shah Nasr-ed-Din was shot dead at the mosque where he was making a pilgrimage, the grand vizier of the time, who was none other than this same Mirza Ali Asghar Khan, pretended that the Shah's wound was not serious, had the corpse seated in the carriage and drove back to the palace beside it, acting as if he were talking to his sovereign, fanning him and asking occasionally for water to quench his thirst, as though he were still alive.

The death was not acknowledged till some days later. In this way, the vizier gave the heir-apparent, the present Shah, time to return from Tanris and avoided the grave troubles that would certainly have arisen had the truth been known. Muzaffr-ed-Din owned his crown and perhaps his life to his grand vizier; small wonder that he showed him some gratitude.

His court minister, Mohamed Khan, could also have laid claim to this gratitude, for he gave proof of remarkable presence of mind at the time of the attempted assassination of which Muzaffr-ed-Din was the object during his stay in Paris in 1900.

The incident is perhaps still in the reader's recollection. The Shah, with the court minister by his side and General Parent, the chief French officer attached to his person, seated facing him, had just left the Sovereign's Palace to drive to the exhibition, when a man sprang on the step of the open landau, produced a revolver and took aim at the monarch's chest. Before he had time, however, to pull the trigger, a hand of iron fell upon his wrist and clutched it with such force that the man was compelled to let go his revolver, which fell at the feet of the sovereign, while the would-be murderer was arrested by the police. Mohamed Khan, by this opportune and energetic interference, had prevented a shot the consequences of which would have been disastrous for the Shah and very annoying for the French government, all the more so inasmuch as the author of this attempt was a French subject, a sort of fanatic from the South, to whom the recent assassination of King Humbert of Italy had suggested this fantastic plan of making away with the unoffending Muzaffr-ed-Din. Here is a curious detail: I had received that very morning an anonymous letter, dated from Naples, but posted in Paris, in which the sovereign was warned that an attempt would be made on his life. Although this kind of communication was frequent, I had ordered the supervision to be redoubled inside the palace; as a matter of fact, I did not much fear a surprise outside, as the Shah never drove out but his carriage was surrounded by a detachment of cavalry. Now ill-luck would have it that he took it into his head to go out that day before the time which he himself had fixed and without waiting for the arrival of the escort: I have shown the result.

During the whole of this tragic scene, which lasted only a few seconds, he did not utter a single word; the pallor which had overspread his cheeks alone betrayed the emotion which he had felt. Nevertheless, he ordered the coachman to drive on. When, at last, they reached the Champs élysées and he perceived numerous groups waiting to cheer him, he emerged from his stupor:

"Is it going to begin again?" he cried, in accents of terror.

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