Among the French residents all is consternation. M. de Guilleragues, after repeated demands and denials, had only a week before obtained leave for his wife and daughter to depart on the plea of ill-health: now, fearing lest the Porte should cancel the permission, he hastens to send them away; but he is not quick enough: the vessel has fallen down the Sea of Marmara some leagues, the ladies are on the very point of following in a boat, when a peremptory command from the Vizir stops them and compels the vessel to turn back. Simultaneously the Ambassador is summoned to give an account of what was done at Chios; but before he has set out, a countermand comes, ordering him to hold himself ready for another summons. While waiting for this summons, M. de Guilleragues gives out that, when he appears before the Vizir, he will not utter one word, unless he has his seat on the Soffah: he will only hand to him the King’s letters--which all these months still remain undelivered--and, let him do his worst, Kara Mustafa shall have no other answer. Very fine--but the French merchants, in great alarm, apply to the various foreign Ministers to save the best of their effects.
The English await developments with tense interest: “Every day is like to produce great matters,” writes Sir John, and the writing, much larger and with wider spaces between the lines than usual, illustrates his excitement. “The result of these resolute orders of His Most Christian Majesty can end in nothing mean.” France, he thinks, has gone too far to draw back: she must either come to an absolute breach with the Porte, or “make the Proud Heads of this place to stoop”--in which case all Christendom will reap the benefit: “If the Turk once finds that things are not tamely putt up, transactions here will be more easy, and I hope My Lord Chandos will find the good effect of this passe.”[291]
The anticipation was abundantly verified. Chandos made the most of this fortunate conjuncture. During the weeks he remained incognito waiting for the _Oxford_, he prepared the ground, and in his audience with Kara Mustafa he delivered the sterner letter from the King: the Vizir read it through most carefully and bade the Ambassador welcome, without any allusion to its contents. But it was obvious that he had been deeply impressed; and the Ambassador did not fail to strike while the iron was hot. He struck so vigorously and skilfully that by the 5th of September he had obtained full satisfaction on the two main points: The money extorted from Finch for the Capitulations was refunded to the Treasurer of the Levant Company by Kara Mustafa’s Jew, who, to save the Grand Vizir’s face, pretended that it came out of the dead Kehayah’s hoard. This was a triumph of which Chandos might well be proud--restitution of money had never yet been procured from a Turk; and it was followed by another, not less pleasant: in his own words, “the false demand upon his Excellency for a prodigious sum of money by the Pasha of Tunis is also for ever damn’d by the most valid way in their Law we could desire without parting with one asper.” And even that was not all: “We are also now promised several other Articles of considerable benefit to trade in these parts and shall have them in our custody in a few days.” On one point only the Ambassador found the Vizir adamant and was forced by the haste which the Company’s interests required not to lose time in disputing it, but to accept his “parole of honour that if any prince in the world ever had the priviledge of the Suffra we should have it the first”--a promise which the Vizir had no difficulty in making, as he went on to add that “heaven should be earth and earth heaven before any such thing should be condescended to by them!”[292] That a man, while parting with solid cash, should cling so passionately to an empty form, is but another manifestation of the mysterious workings of the official mind. However, we were more than satisfied with a liberality which would have been more meritorious, but could not have been more welcome, had it been voluntary.