Page:History of the French in India.djvu/448

 422 THE PALL OF DUPLEIX. chap, reassure him. He had known Godeheu since his early 1X ' youth, and had ever befriended him. He had been his 1754 superior at Chandranagar, where he had ever been treated by the young councillor with marked defer- ence and respect. He had even, on one occasion, been the means of saving his life. After his departure from Chandranagar, Godeheu had become a director of the Company of the Indies, and in that capacity had corresponded closely and intimately with Dupleix. He had ever evinced towards him a devotion and an admiration that were quite unbounded. The appointment of a man so befriended, so devoted, to act — as Dupleix then believed — solely as Commis- sioner to bring about peace, could have in it nothing to alarm the French Governor. He did not know — in fact he had had no opportunity of knowing — that this man, seemingly so devoted, was one of those miserable vermin who seek to raise themselves by fawning on and flattering great men. He did not know that all the time this Godeheu had been writing to him letters full of the most fulsome professions of friendship, he had been intriguing amongst the Directors for his downfall, in the hope to be himself appointed his suc- cessor. He did not know that so far from desiring to aid him, or to profit by his advice, this Godeheu had asked for authority to send him home in disgrace and arrest, but had been overruled by the Directors, who had especially forbidden him to use force or restraint, except in the improbable event of the resistance on the part of Dupleix to lawful authority. How could he know such things ; how, even, could he divine them ? A noble and generous nature invariably revolts from the very suspicion of baseness. It appears to him too horrible, too unnatural, a degradation of intellect below the range of even the animal creation 1 Endowed him- self with a lofty sense of honour and a warm, sympa- thising nature, how could Dupleix imagine that one