On July 10, 1906, one month after their arrival in France, the dancers performed at a reception given by the Minister of Colonies in the Bois du Boulogne in Paris. "Never has there been a more brilliant Parisian fête", said Le Figaro, "nor one with such novel charm." Invitations were much sought after and on the night of the performance cars and illuminated carriages invaded the park like an `army of fireflies.'

While the performance was in progress a correspondent spotted the most celebrated Parisian of all in the audience, the bearded Mosaic figure of "the great Rodin... (going) into ecstasies over the little virgins of Phnom Penh, whose immaterial silhouettes he drew with infinite love..."

Rodin, now at the age of 66, France's acknowledged apostle of the arts, fell immediately captive: in Princess Soumphady's young charges he discovered the infancy of Europe. "These Cambodians have shown us everything that antiquity could have contained," he wrote soon afterwards. "It is impossible to think of anyone wearing human nature to such perfection; except them and the Greeks."

Two days after the performance Rodin presented himself at the dancers' Paris lodgings, at the Avenue Malakoff, with a sketchbook under his arm. The dancers were packing their belongings, in preparation for their return to Marseille, but Rodin was admitted to the grounds of the mansion and given leave to do what he pleased. He executed several celebrated sketches that day, including a few of King Sisowath.

By the end of the day the artist was so smitten with the dancers that he accompanied them to the station, bought a ticket, and travelled to Marseille on the same train. He had packed neither clothes nor materials and according to one account, upon arriving in Marseille he found that he was out of paper and had to buy brown paper bags from a grocery store.

Over the next few days, sketching feverishly in the gardens of the villa where the dancers were now lodged, Rodin seemed to lose thirty years. The effort involved in sketching his favourite models, three restless fourteen-year-olds called Sap, Soun and Yem, appeared to rejuvenate the artist. A French official saw him placing a sheet of white paper on his knee one morning; he "said to the little Sap: `Put your foot on this', and then drew the outline of her foot with a pencil, saying `Tomorrow you'll have your shoes, but now pose a little more for me! Sap, having tired of atomizer bottles and cardboard cats, had asked her `papa' for a pair of pumps. Every evening - ardent, happy, but exhausted - Rodin would return to his hotel with his hands full of sketches and collect his thoughts."

Photographs from the time show Rodin seated on a garden bench, sketching under the watchful eyes of the policemen who had been posted at the dancers' villa to ensure their safety. Rodin was oblivious:"The friezes of Angkor were coming to life before my very eyes. I loved these Cambodian girls so much that I didn't know how to express my gratitude for the royal honour they had shown me in dancing and posing for me. I went to the Nouvelles Galeries to buy a basket of toys for them, and these divine children who dance for the gods hardly knew how to repay me for the happiness I had given them. They even talked about taking me with them."

On their last day in France, hours before they boarded the ship that was to take them back to Cambodia, the dancers were taken to the celebrated photographer Baudouin. On the way, passing through a muddy alley, Princess Soumphady happened to step on a pat of cow-dung. Horrified she raised her arms to the heavens and flung herself, wailing, upon the dust, oblivious of her splendid costume. The rest of the troupe immediately followed suit: within moments the alley was full of prostrate Cambodian dancers, dressed in full performance regalia.

"What an emptiness they left for me!" wrote Rodin. "When they left...I thought they had taken away the beauty of the world... I followed them to Marseille; I would have followed them as far as Cairo."

His sentiments were exactly mirrored by King Sisowath. "I am deeply saddened to be leaving France," the King said, on the eve of his departure, "in this beautiful country I shall leave behind a piece of my heart."