A few days later I called upon M. Drouyn de L'huys,ÁrminiusVambé who showed a more eager interest in the Central Asian question than his master. He started by asking me whether it was true that I had given a memorandum to Lord Palmerston on the Central Asian question, and whether I really believed in the imminent danger of collision between the two great European Powers in the distant East. I answered that I had not given, nor was I asked to write any communication to the British Government, and as far as I noticed from my conversation with the Prime Minister of the Queen of England, they had got on the other side of the Channel quite different views from those I held on the question.
Besides these two official receptions, I have to mention my interview with the Prince Napoleon, who received me in the Palais Royal, and who, whilst seated under the life-size portrait of his great-uncle, seemed to be watching to discover whether I noticed the likeness said to exist between him and his uncle. Well, I was really struck with the striking similitude existing between the prominent features of both. The two heads resembled each other, however, only in a very external form; and there was a difference in which the Emperor's cousin would never believe, and from this unbelief derived so many disagreeable adventures in his life. I need scarcely say that these official visits did not answer much to my taste. But still less did I like the intruding call of reporters, who interviewed me and published the next day totally false reports of my conversation with them, which I had afterwards to I contradict, particularly as some of them announced that I was entrusted by Lord Palmerston with a secret mission to the Tartars, and other similar nonsense. One writer--if I remember well, a Polish prince--went even so far as to write a novel about my travels, in which I was represented as a champion of romantic propensities, with whom a Tartar princess fell in love, and who, having obtained in this way some throne in Asia, was now on a political errand in Europe to secure the friendship of England and France in the contest against Russia. I laughed heartily at these exalted reports; but in the end I got tired of a dubious sort of reputation, and I left France to proceed through Germany to my native country, where I should have to decide whether I should settle down quietly or whether I should plunge again in new adventures and revisit the interior of Asia.