An interesting point, but not worth dwelling upon. Whether right was on Kara Mustafa’s side or not, might certainly was; and he exercised it without pity. Leaving Finch for the moment in suspense, he turned his undivided attention to Nointel. After tearing up a Memorial of the French Ambassador’s and abusing the Dragoman who presented it, he confined the noble Marquis in his house and threatened to commit him to the Seven Towers--an old Byzantine fortress which served the purposes of an Ottoman Bastille.
M. de Nointel’s distress was indescribable. From his King he could expect no support. For some time past, owing to his consistent failures at the Porte, he had been under a cloud at Versailles--a cloud that not one ray of royal clemency or one livre from the royal exchequer came to pierce. An attempt to make both ends meet by fleecing French merchants with the help of Turkish soldiers had deepened his disgrace without relieving him permanently from his financial difficulties. Day after day his debts mounted; day after day his spirits sank. Creditors clamoured for payment at his door, and not daring to attack him directly as yet, attacked his secretaries. Any day he might find himself in the Seven Towers. At last, in despair, the miserable Marquis sued for peace on the Grand Vizir’s terms, and only procured it by agreeing to pay him an extraordinary present of 3000 dollars--in household stuff and plate, for of ready money he had none. In spite, or perhaps because, of his abject surrender, the representative of the great Louis was made to drink the cup of humiliation to its bitterest dregs. Twice Kara Mustafa summoned him to audience, and twice he sent him away without audience; and when the third time he did receive him, he declined to partake of coffee and sherbet, or to be perfumed with him, but let the Giaour have his refreshments alone.[193]
Sir John had not been ignorant of Nointel’s overtures to the Porte, nor was he unaware of the fact that, after the Frenchman’s capitulation, his own position would be much worse. Yet what could he do? To forestall Nointel by submitting first would have been too great a degradation, and would have afforded the French Ambassador a warrantable excuse for transferring the whole responsibility for his own submission upon Finch’s shoulders. In this dilemma, our Ambassador displayed his noted talent for expedients. He ordered his Dragomans to tell the Vizir’s Kehayah that he had received instructions from the King of England to thank the Grand Signor by the Vizir’s mouth for a favour (meaning the Smyrna figs, though he did not say so), and that he was ready at any time to wait upon his Excellency, if the Grand Vizir would be pleased to receive him “with any distinction from the lowest Minister of the meanest Prince.” But in vain: Nointel’s pliancy had stiffened Kara Mustafa’s back. So Sir John acquiesced in his destiny, and again let the Frenchman proceed first. The day after Nointel’s surrender, he applied for audience without reservations or conditions. He received a patronising reply, that his “Motion was very good”; but the Vizir was so taken up with the Polish Treaty that he could not at present appoint a day. Several times, during the next three months, Sir John repeated his “motion,” and every time he met with the same evasive answer.