de Morcerf" (these words were accompanied by a most peculiar smile), "whether you undertake, upon my arrival in France, to open to me the doors of that fashionable world of which I know no more than a Huron or a native of
Cochin-China?"
He looked thoughtfully at the chart as if surveying chances and distances from a lofty height--and follow- ing with his eyes his own figure wandering on the blank land of
Cochin-China, and then passing off that piece of paper clean out of sight into uncharted regions.
(1.)
Cochin-China: Containing Many Admirable Rarities and Singularities of that Country (Amsterdam & New York: Da Capo Press and Thearum Orbis Terrarum Ltd, 1970), reprint.
Meanwhile in 1887 the French had formed their disparate Vietnamese territories of
Cochin-China, Annam and Tonkin, plus Cambodia and what is now called Laos, into a colonial federation after finally completing the conquest of Vietnam.