In 1886, a former naval officer published a book in Paris on Indochina. His name was Léonce Détroyat. He had seen Tourane in 1858, run a major newspaper and written the libretto of a Saint-Saëns opera. In one chapter, he attacks the convention forced on King Norodom in 1884, which he judged unworthy of France. Nothing suggests he ever set foot in Phnom Penh. His text remains a record of how Paris saw Cambodia, just as the kingdom was rising up.