L'Abbé Larnaudie

L'abbé Larnaudie accompanied the Siamese ambassadors to Paris in June 1861 and acted as their interpreter during their stay in France. A Jesuit missionary who was a close associate of Monsignor Pallegoix, the vicar apostolic of Eastern Siam, he spent some 15 years in Siam and was fluent not only in Siamese but also in Japanese and at least one Chinese dialect. I'm told he later returned to France and died there in 1899.

Photographed by Nadar.