Later that morning Gardane had still greater reason to feel exasperated at the conduct of the Persian officials. The Mahemander Bachi called upon him to say that, having learned from the Peskis Nuvicz that the gifts sent by the Emperor to the Shah were not yet available, he could not, for the time being, present the General to His Imperial Majesty. Protocol ruled that presents from foreign monarchs must always be offered, examined and their worth assessed before an Ambassador could be granted an audience.
Gardane again attempted bribery, but this time without success. Evidently it was more than the Mahemandcr Bachi's place was worth to ignore the accepted procedure. When the official had gone, the General gave vent to his fury at being delayed in attempting to carry out the task with which the Emperor had charged him. The many additional hours of exhausting travel across deserts and over mountains endured by himself and his officers had proved wasted effort. They might just as well have come by easy stages with the camel caravan. But there was nothing he could do about it.
His wrath was somewhat mitigated that afternoon after he had received another visitor. This was the Superior of the Capuchin Fathers who had established a monastery in Isfahan many generations earlier, were well regarded by the Shah and had accumulated an exhaustive knowledge of the Persians and their customs.
The Superior assured Gardane that the two or three weeks' delay before he could be presented at Court should, in the long run, prove all to the good, as it would enable him to become acquainted with numerous Ministers and functionaries, whose goodwill was essential to the success of the mission. To gain it, he advised the General to lose no opportunity of entertaining them, making them such presents as he could and, above all, flattering them. Among the most important to be cultivated in his fashion were the Shah's twenty-four gentlemen-in-waiting, who were called Yessaouls. They were a venal crowd who openly made a fat living by obtaining concessions and favours for foreigners; but they had great influence with their master.
Of the Persians generally, the Superior said they were a kindly but intensely proud people regarding themselves, in view of their three-thousand-year-old civilisation, as superior to all others. They taught their children three things: to tell the truth, to draw a bow and to ride a horse. Even the shopkeepers went everywhere on horseback. But they were congenitally lazy, which was probably due to the climate. For a great part of the year a warm humidity, which proved most enervating, pervaded the whole country south of the great range of mountains north of Tehran. It caused bow strings to become slack and even rusted scimitars if left long in their scabbards.
In the days that followed, Gardane and his officers were treated with the greatest courtesy. As the official responsible for the well-being of guests, the Mahemander Bachi visited them frequently and arranged for them to see the sights of the city. Mesrop-Li-bec accompanied them everywhere and they learned from him that, although quite a number of higher-class Persians had a limited knowledge of cither French or English and many of them understood Arabic and Turkish perfectly, it was considered beneath their dignity to converse in any foreign language. It was for this reason that Armenians were always used as interpreters.
On being conducted through the city, the French marvelled beyond all else at the Maidan Square, which had been built by Shah Abbas early in the seventeenth century. It was, Roger reckoned, about seven times the size of the largest square in Europe: the Piazza San Marco in Venice. The buildings surrounding it were uniform: each having a pointed arch in its upper storey. Centrally, on one of the longer sides, there towered up above the line of flat roofs the Shah's Ali Qipa Palace. It had a high, broad balcony, from which he and his Court could watch the polo matches played in the huge square.
Opposite the Palace stood the Lutfallah, or Ladies' Mosque, to which the Banou—the chief wife of the Shah—and her female companions could go unattended, by an underground passage beneath the square, to practise their devotions. Dominating the north end of the square, there rose the huge, blue dome and minarets of a still larger mosque, the Masjed el Shah, and at its opposite end lay the entrance to a covered bazaar even greater in extent than that in Constantinople.
To the surprise of the French, they were allowed to enter the mosques and were shown round them. The majority of the peoples in the Mohammedan world were Siinies and held that Omar, Osman and Abu Bakar were the lawful descendants of the Prophet. But the Persians were of the Shiah sect, the members of which maintained that Ali, Mohammed's son-in-law, had been the next in succession. The latter were much more liberal in their views and could, perhaps, be compared with Protestants as opposed to Roman Catholics, in their attitude to the practice of Christianity.
The tiles in the two mosques were superb, having a wonderful variety of patterns and rich colours. One section of tiling in the Ladies' Mosque particularly intrigued Roger. It was about six feet high by four wide and was the original design for a silk rug which Shah Abbas had sent as a present to Queen Elizabeth of England.
It was on their fourth day in Isfahan that the Mahemander Bachi suggested that, as another ten days or more must elapse before the presents for the Shah arrived, and that no business could be transacted until they did, Gardane and his officers might like to visit the ancient capital of Shiraz. With relays of horses, the two-hundred-milc journey could easily be accomplished in four days, so they could spend three nights there and be back in Isfahan before the caravan was expected.
The five officers with the General, having become fascinated with the marvels of Persia, pressed him to agree, so he consented. Early the following morning, Mesrop arrived with a dozen men leading horses, the panniers of which were loaded with tentage, food and fruit drinks packed in crushed ice. The French, accompanied by their grooms, mounted, and the cavalcade set off.
By ten o'clock they found the heat intensely trying, so Mesrop called a halt and the tents were erected. But, after they had taken an hour's rest, he persuaded them to mount again and cover another five miles until they reached a caravanserai, where they had a meal, then slept through the heat of the afternoon. Later, in the cool of the evening, they rode about twenty miles, then spent the night at another caravanserai. On these lines their journey progressed until, on August 3rd, they reached Shiraz, where they were lodged in one of the many houses owned by the Shah. It had a pleasant garden, with an avenue of orange trees; but the house itself they found quite extraordinary, as every room in it was panelled with thousands of diamond-shaped pieces of mirror.
In some ways the visitors found Shiraz even more interesting than Isfahan, and they were particularly impressed by the beautiful tombs of the famous poets Sa'adi and Hafiz. To them it seemed strange that a people should honour its poets more than they did its monarchs, statesmen and successful Generals. But that was plainly the case. The remains of both poets reposed in marble sarcophagi beneath domes supported by a circle of pillars raised up on marble platforms. Surrounding them were spacious gardens in which, despite the torrid heat, bedded-out flowers were kept in blossom by skilful irrigation and companies of gardeners who sprayed them with water every night.
On their second evening in Shiraz, Mesrop proposed that the next day he should take them out to the ruins of Persepolis, the ancient capital from which Darius, Cyrus the Great and Xerxes had ruled a vast empire. It entailed a ride of some thirty-five miles, so they set off at five o'clock in the morning, in order to arrive there and go over to the ruins before it became unbearably hot.