mplain of any want of attention. Every word addressed to me was now
prefaced with, By your favour, By your condescension, May your kindness
never be less; and compliments which never ended, interlarded all the
fine discourses I heard. To hear them, nobody could have ever supposed
that I was the same person whom not two months before they had laughed
to scorn: on the contrary, one ignorant of the circumstance would have
set me down for a personage upon whom the issues of life and death
depended. But when I took my leave of the old Osman, I found him
unchanged, and every word he spoke showed that his affection for the son
of the barber of Ispahan was the feeling which ever actuated his conduct
towards me. 'Go, my son,' said he, as he parted from me, 'whether you be
a prisoner with the Turcomans, or a priest, or a seller of pipe-sticks,
or a Turkish aga, or a Persian mirza; be you what you may. I shall
always put up my prayers for your prosperity, and may Allah attend your
steps wherever you go.'

Having made his visits of ceremony, and taken his leave of the Turkish
authorities, the ambassador left Scutari, accompanied by a large company
of his own countrymen, who conducted him about one parasang on the
road to Persia, and then received their dismissal. Our journey was
propitious, and nothing took place in it worthy of notice from the day
of our departure until our arrival in Persia. At Erivan we heard the
news of the day, though but imperfectly; but at Tabriz, the seat of
Abbas Mirza's government, we were initiated into the various questions
which then agitated the country and the court. The principal one was the
rivalry between the French and English ambassadors; the object of the
former, who had already been received by the Shah, being to keep away
the latter, who had not yet reached the foot of the throne.

Various were the anecdotes related of the exertions made by them to
attain their ends, and the whole of Persia was thrown into astonishment
upon seeing infidels come so far from their own countries, at so much
trouble and expense, to quarrel in the face of a whole nation of true
believers, who were sure to despise, to deride, and to take them in.

The Frenchman, by way of enforcing his demands, constantly brought
forward the power of his own sovereign, his greatness and preponderance
over all the states of Europe, and did not cease to extol the immense
numbers of troops he could bring into the field.

To this he