Читать книгу Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681 онлайн

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The momentous interview took place on the 24th of February 1675. It lasted three hours—three hours spent mostly “in Expostulations upon the mutuall dissatisfactions receivd’ and given.” Item was set against item, in the usual debit-and-credit style, so that it might be ascertained on whose side lay the balance of offence. And now it transpired that, after all their neglects at his entrance into Smyrna, our factors had inflicted upon M. de Nointel an affront of a peculiarly exasperating nature. It was this: one fine day, as the noble Marquis was passing by the sea-shore, he espied on a gallery that overlooked the sea three or four of those blades. Did they salute him? Far from it: the moment they saw him, they set their hats fast upon their heads, lest peradventure the wind should blow them off and the accident be construed into a salute, and then sat still with their arms “a kimbow.” Stifling his wrath, the Marquis tried a ruse, by ordering those of his retinue who followed close behind him to salute first, which was accordingly done; but it worked nothing: the young Englishmen kept their original posture, for all the world as if they were not aware of his Excellency’s existence. What had Sir John to set against this piece of cool effrontery? Sir John rose to the occasion: “As to the unmannerly young men; I could not but confesse That it was high rudenesse”; but when he was at Smyrna he passed, not once but several times, under the French Consul’s gallery without his taking any notice of him: “And this was done by a Magistrate in goverment who should know and practise more Civility.” Having thus beaten back the attack, Sir John proceeded to carry the war into the enemy’s territory: “I told Him He must now Give me Leave to Instance in Two things which I had reason to beleive He could not Parallel.” The first was the detention of the English mail, the second the aspersion on the English factors’ character. Nointel answered the first by explaining that it was done upon the petition of the French Captains whom the Hunter had omitted to salute, but it was only a temporary delay: the letters were delivered after his departure. As to his accusation of our factors, he confessed that he had been provoked to it by Mr. Rycaut’s assertion that the French coiner had paid to one of Sir John’s interpreters “35 false Dollars, which in Truth were but five.”