session of Teflis, Baadkoo, Derbent, and of all which belonged to
Persia in former times. He said, that he would conquer India for us, and
drive the English from it; and, in short, whatever we asked he promised
to be ready to grant.

'Now, 'tis true, we had heard of the French before, and knew that they
made good cloth and rich brocades; but we never heard that they could do
all this ambassador proclaimed.

'Something we had heard also of their attacking Egypt, for coffee and
khenna had become dear in consequence; and it was in the recollection
of one of our old khans of the Seffi family, that an ambassador from a
certain Shah Louis of France had been seen at the court of Shah Sultan
Hosein; but how this Boonapoort had become Shah, not a single man
in Persia could explain. The Armenian merchants, who travel into all
countries, affirmed, that to their knowledge such a person in fact did
exist, and that he was a great breeder of disturbance; and it was from
what they said and from other circumstances, that the Shah agreed to
receive his ambassador; but whether the papers which he exhibited,
written in characters that no one could read, were true or false, or
whether all he said was to the purpose or not, who was to say? Our
viziers, great and small, knew nothing of the matter; our Shah, who (may
Allah preserve him) knows everything under the sun, he had no knowledge
of it; and excepting one Coja Obed, an Armenian, who had been to
Marsilia, a town in France, where he had been shut up in a prison for
forty days,[87] and one Narses, a priest of that nation, who had studied
in a convent of dervishes somewhere in those countries, we had no one at
the gate of the King of Kings who could let any light into the chambers
of our brain, or who could in the least explain whether this Boonapoort
or his representative were impostors or not,--whether they were come to
take our caps from off our heads, or to clothe us with the kalaats of
good fortune.

'However, we were not very long in doubt; for when the English infidels
who trade between India and Persia, some of whom reside at Abusheher,
heard of the arrival of this ambassador, they immediately sent off
messengers, letters, and an agent, to endeavour to impede the reception
of this Frenchman, and made such extraordinary efforts to prevent his
success, that we soon discovered much was to be got between the rival
dogs.

'"By my crown," exclaimed the Shah, "all this cometh from the