Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/272

248 your majesty: I have given you the twelve hundred purses against the express orders of my sovereign." So saying, he took his leave with a dejected countenance. The king stopped him, and said that he would make an excuse for him to the sultan. "Ah!" replied the Turk, as he was going away, "my master can punish faults, but cannot excuse them."

Pasha Ismael carried this piece of news to the kam who having received the same orders as the pasha, not to suffer the twelve hundred purses to be given to the king before his departure, and having consented to the delivery of the money, was as apprehensive as the pasha, of the Grand Seignior's indignation. They both wrote to the Porte in their own vindication, protesting they did not give the twelve hundred purses but upon a solemn promise from the king's minister that he would depart without delay, and beseeching his highness not to impute the king's refusal to their disobedience.

Charles, still persisting in the belief that the kam and pasha intended to deliver him up to his enemies, ordered M. Funk, who was then his envoy at the Ottoman court, to lay his complaints against them before the sultan and to ask a thousand purses more. His great generosity and the little account he made of money, hindered him from perceiving the meanness of this proposal. He did it with a view to be refused, and in order to find a fresh pretext for delaying his departure. But a man must be reduced to strange extremities, to stand in need of such artifices. Savari, his interpreter, an artful and enterprising man, carried the letter to Adrian-