of the power and resources of the French
king. The third was the son of a former
ambassador to Portugal, and probably owed
his appointment to a presumed acquaintance
with European usages. Their suite
consisted of eight mandarins and twenty
domestics quite numerous enough one would
think but we are told that six mandarins
and a number of domestics had to be left
behind, as they did not make their appearance
in time at the port of embarkation.
Their appearance at Versailles was quite a
god-send to the courts, which had begun to
fall into a sad state of vapidity under the
régime of the genteel asceticism which
Madame de Maintenon was introducing. Besides
frequent mention of them in the histories
and memoirs of the time, we have the full
account which M. Jean Donneau de Viré,
the implacable critic of Molière and the father
of French journalism, gave the public of their
proceedings in the pages of his Mercure
Galant. His special correspondent seems to
have followed the Siamese strangers about
during the whole of their nine months' stay
in France with an inquisitorial pertinacity
and vigilance which would do honour to a
modern Manchester reporter. Not a particular
of any consequence escapes him; all
their outgoings and incomings are recorded;
all the visits they paid and received; the
innumerable speeches that were made to
them, and the answers they returned.

M. de Chaumont's squadron arrived at
Brest on the nineteenth of June, and here
the Mercure takes them up at once. M. de
Chaumont and the Abbé de Choisy started
for Paris at once, to make their report to
the King, leaving the strangers behind at
Brest, where they remained thirteen days,
passing their time very agreeably. On the
fourteenth day arrived M. Storff, a gentleman
of the King's household, who had been
deputed to attend on the embassy during its stay
in France. With him came M. Selly, the
maître d'hôtel, to whose care the King had
entrusted the creature-comforts of the
embassy. M. Storff's first business was to
congratulate the ambassadors on behalf of the
King, on their safe arrival, and to inform
them that his Majesty had been pleased to
order that nothing should be left undone to
testify his extreme gratification at the
handsome manner in which M. de Chaumont had
been received in Siam. His Majesty, he
assured them, would have sent his own
carriages to convey them to Paris, but that the
roads in some parts of Brittany were so bad
that they could only be travelled over in
litters. It seems rather startling to be told
that the King's highway between his capital
and his chief naval station was impassable
for carriages; but it turns out that the route
taken was by the valley of the Loire,
probably because it led through the finest towns
and the richest country, and to reach this
four or five days' travelling by cross-roads to
Nantes was necessary. To all this the chief
ambassador answered that the mode of
travelling was a secondary consideration, that
his only anxiety was to be in the King's
presence at the earliest possible moment, and
that if he could reach it quickest on foot he
would set out at once.

On the ninth of July, everything being
ready for their departure, and the heavy
baggage—in all a hundred and thirty-two
packages—having been sent round to Havre
and the Seine, our travellers set their faces
towards Paris. On the twelfth, travelling by
short, but not easy stages, they came to Vannes,
where they were received with great honour
by the parliament of Brittany. On the
fourteenth, having got over the worst of the
roads, they exchanged their litters at
Roche-Bernard for wheeled carriages. In the first
carriage, along with the chief ambassador,
went the letter of their master to the King
of France, the proper conveyance of which
was a source of perpetual anxiety. It was a
point of the first importance in the code of
Siamese loyalty that the royal missive should
always be maintained above the level of the
heads of its bearers; and a moveable shelf
was fitted up at the top of the carriage on
which the precious trust was deposited. So
inflexible was this rule, that, when the maître
d'hôtel proposed at one of the halting places
to lodge the third ambassador in a chamber
over that of the first (by which arrangement
he would have lain over the royal letter), he
preferred to "pig in" with a mandarin rather
than be guilty of an act which would have
exposed him to the penalties of high treason on
his return home. At Paris it was lodged in
the first ambassador's bedchamber, on a hand-
some pedestal erected for it, of which De Viré
gives us a drawing. The letter was written
on a golden plate, as is the custom when his
Majesty of Siam writes to a brother monarch,
and was enveloped in three boxes; the outside
one of Japanese lacquer-work, the next of
silver, and the inner one of gold. Each box
was sealed with the seal of the first ambassador
in white wax. None of the Siamese
ever passed before this emanation of royalty
without saluting it with a profound
reverence. On the seventeenth, the ambassadors
arrived at Nantes, where M. de Molac, the
governor, had made preparations to give
them a distinguished reception. He met
them outside the gates at the head of the
young nobility of the district, accompanied
by a numerous band of ladies in the
carriages, and conducted them into the town
amidst innumerable salutes of artillery.
Next day they came to Ancenis, where it
is recorded that the ambassadors bathed.
They had probably never gone so long without
a duck in their lives before; but the
proceeding was altogether so novel to M.
de Viré as to oblige him to explain to the
i reader that it was their habit to bathe
frequently in their own country, and he adds,