At the end of his four years with the Dominicans of Rome, Vansleb went to France, where he was presented by Bosquet, the learned Bishop of Montpellier, to the minister Colbert, as a man of superior merits and of great erudition in the oriental languages. Succeeding Mazarin and Fouquet in the councils of Louis XIV., Colbert aimed to distinguish his administration by fostering letters, sciences, and the arts.
The Royal Library, of sixteen thousand volumes at the accession of the king, contained seventy thousand at the end of his reign—an increase mainly due to Colbert. At once recognizing the merit of Vansleb, Colbert charged him with an important Scientific mission. He was instructed to travel through oriental countries, and especially to visit Mount Athos, the island of Chio, Aleppo, Mount Sinai, Nitria, Constantinople, Turkey, Persia, and Baalbec; everywhere seeking and purchasing Arabian, Turkish, Persian, and Greek books and manuscripts. He was to make his way to the most remarkable monasteries for the purpose of obtaining certain ecclesiastical works; to collect rare medals, statues, and bas-reliefs, besides preparations in botany, natural history, and mineralogy; to give descriptions of machinery, utensils, costumes, and vestments of the different nations he saw; to copy inscriptions on monuments, pillars, obelisks, and tombstones. He will keep aloof—continued his directions—from political complications, wear such costumes as he may think proper, and select the route which to him seems best.
The original of these instructions was found only a few years since among the papers of Vansleb. They bear this singular indorsement in the handwriting of Colbert himself: "I do not understand these instructions, more particularly as you proposed Vansleb for a mission to Ethiopia, which country is not even mentioned. The instructions, as they stand, might just as well have been given by the French ambassador at Constantinople."
In point of fact, the instructions had been drawn up by Carcavy, the royal librarian, a man of great merit. He saw almost insurmountable obstacles to the success of an Ethiopian mission, and thought it better to confine its authorization to merely verbal instructions, leaving it to Vansleb to attempt it or not, as he might find most advisable.
The dissatisfaction of Colbert was not at first fully appreciated, but it was doubtless the germ of the neglect with which Vansleb was afterward treated, and of the coolness and injustice of his reception when he returned.
Vansleb departed on this, his second journey to the East, in the spring of 1671, and visited Malta, Cyprus, Aleppo, Damascus, and a part of Phœnicia. He reached Damietta in March, 1672, after a journey marked by delays, dangers, storms, and sickness; for oriental travel was not the comparatively easy and comfortable journeying of to-day, nor had the brutality and tyranny of eastern officials toward Christians been rebuked and corrected as they since have been. Establishing his headquarters at Cairo, Vansleb made numerous excursions to the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and the various monuments then so novel, but now so familiar to Europeans, and indeed to Americans. After renewing his acquaintance with the Patriarch Matthew de Mir, who had unconsciously been the instrument of his conversion to Catholicity, Vansleb embarked for Rosetta in May, 1672.
But we do not propose to follow our traveller through all his wanderings. They were full of novelty for him and for those who, at that period, read his descriptions of them. In 1673, he visited Upper Egypt and explored the antiquities of Esneh and Denderah, and the remains of ancient Thebes at Luxor and Karnak. At Lycopolis, the Bishop Amba Joannes introduced to him one Muallim Athanarius, the only man in all Egypt, he said, who spoke the Coptic language. Vansleben did not converse with him, but flattered himself on having seen the man with whom the Coptic language was to expire. After exploring the Thebaide and its grottos, and visiting the ruins of Enseneh, the column of Marcus Aurelius and the Triumphal Arch, he returned to Cairo. Of course he had not lost sight of one of the main objects of his mission, the purchase of rare and valuable works for the Royal Library. He neglected no opportunity to obtain them, and up to this period of his journey he had purchased and forwarded to Paris three hundred and thirty-four volumes, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. Compelled to deal with people of all classes, some of them had spoken of his purchases, and by the time he returned to Cairo it was reported that the Frank stranger was gathering all the sacred books in the country for the purpose of sending them away to the infidels. The Mohammedan laws made it a capital crime for a stranger to buy, sell, or even have in his possession any of their books, whether treating of religion or any other subject. To exemplify the feeling with which they regard the possession of their books by infidels, (Christians,) M. Champollion Figeac relates that during the reign of Louis Philippe a number of young Arabs were sent to France by Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, and among them two sons of the viceroy. While visiting the Royal Library, M. Champollion took pains to show one of the young princes the magnificent copy of the Koran taken from a mosque in Cairo during the French expedition to Egypt. When he saw what the book was, the young Arab turned away his head, covering his face with both hands.
Under the circumstances, Vansleb of course understood at once that he could not remain in Egypt. For two years he had been dealing in books, and, if arrested, there was evidence enough to take his life a hundred times. Without losing a day, he at once set out for Constantinople. Touching at Rhodes and the island of Chio, he went to Smyrna, where, to his great astonishment, and contrary to his uniform experience in the East, his letters of introduction and his credentials were made light of by the resident French consul, who more than insinuated that he suspected him of being an impostor.
Personally wounded, and annoyed at a circumstance that endangered his mission and deprived him of the only legal protector to whom he could have recourse in case of difficulty, Vansleben sought advice and assistance of the English consul, Paul Ricault. Notwithstanding his decidedly French name, Ricault was a veritable Englishman, born in London within the sound of Bow bells. He had been secretary of the Earl of Winchelsea, and ambassador extraordinary of Charles II. to Mohammed IV. After serving eleven years as consul of England at Smyrna, Clarendon appointed him, in 1685, his first secretary for the provinces of Connaught and Leinster. He was afterward privy councillor and judge of the Admiralty, and under William III. was minister resident for the Hanseatic towns. He is the author of a History of the Present Condition of the Ottoman Empire, and other works of merit. The two scholars Ricault and Vansleb immediately sympathized, and through Ricault Vansleb renewed the acquaintance of the ambassador Finch, whom he had met in Florence, and who was then on his way to Constantinople. Unfortunately for Vansleb, a serious difficulty just then arose between the two consuls, English and French, on account of some incivility offered by the latter to the ambassador on his arrival. Already prepossessed against Vansleben, through some underhand manœuvre, Chambon, the French consul, from that moment became his bitter enemy, alleging as one of the principal accusations against him his personal intimacy with the enemies of France. In those days there were no lines of Mediterranean packetboats, and Vansleb was glad to accept the invitation of the ambassador to take passage on the man-of-war which was to transport him and his suite to Constantinople. This added fuel to the flame of Chambon's resentment, and he thereafter left nothing undone to injure Vansleb in the East and in France. Vansleb's destination was perfectly well known, and he had hardly set foot in Constantinople when he perceived that Smyrna had been heard from. The Marquis de Nointel was temporarily absent when Vansleb arrived; but the manner of his reception by those in charge of the ambassador's residence, and by the merchants of the Company of the Levant, for whom he had letters, made it plain to him that these people to whom he was a stranger had already been set against him.
He found lodgings (by no means gratuitous) at the house of a French apothecary named Chaber, who discoursed eloquently on the shortcomings of the French embassy, criticising its extravagance, and its want of consideration for the French merchants of the Levant, who were heavily taxed to maintain its expensive display.