Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/206

194 194 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. man, who had a certain position to maintain, would have had the effrontery to come without any mission, and attempt to impose upon the King of France thus grossly. If the fraud should be discovered, as sooner or later it must be, he could no longer hope to find an asylum either among the Franks whom he had insulted, or among the Mongols, of whose name he had made so unwarrantable a use. All these contradictions may, however, be reconciled by a very simple supposition — namely, that David and his companions were in fact sent by Iltchikadai to concert measures with the Franks against the Mus- sulmans ; but that they had not been furnished with written credentials, or only with one of those pompous decrees which the lieutenants of the Grand Khan were in the habit of sending to the princes with whom they had to communicate. As a paper of this sort, if they had it, would not appear very likely to effect its pur- pose, the envoys might have forged another, into which they could easily slip such expressions as would please the Christians, and dispose them to favour the Tartars. They would not dare, however, to put into writing the account of the conversion of the Grand Khan, and therefore they contented themselves with relating that verbally. Assuming that this might be the explanation of the affair, we shall see in it the first example of the method afterwards pursued in all negotiations with Tartar princes. The letters furnished to ambassadors, not seeming to them likely to secure the good will of those to whom they were addressed, they falsified them, added to them, and, in short, interpreted them altogether in their own fashion. For this reason the translations of these