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 tory, difficult to believe and much exaggerated. They are opposed to geographical knowledge, and it would appear that at that time no one could have thought that any Siamese would have seen France again."

For the French account of the Siamese Embassy see this Journal, ii. 63.

8.A great deal of romancing is connected with the story of the wife of Faulcon. She is of course not mentioned in the Phongsavadan. Turpin, quoting from Tachard and Père d'Orléans, makes her a somewhat melodramatic heroine. Père d'Orléans describes her as Japanese, "celebrated by the nobility of her family and still more by the pure blood of the martyrs from which she had the honour to be descended, and whose virtues she knew so well to imitate." Deslandes, quoted by Lanier, gives her name as Doña Guyomar de Piña, of Portuguese origin. That she later on was employed in the King's kitchen under Phra Phetraja we have no reason to doubt.

Kaempfer gives a tale differing somewhat from that of the French writers just quoted. He says, recording the death of Faulcon, "He was first carried to his home which he found rifled, his wife lay prisoner in the stable who far from taking leave of him spit in his face and would not so much as suffer him to kiss his only remaining son of four years of age, another son being lately dead and still unburied."