"Not that one. The other!" he ordered, pointing to the public prosecutor, who was presiding over the ceremony.
Picture the magistrate's face, while the Shah insisted and thought it discourteous of them not at once to yield to his wishes.
I therefore asked myself with a certain dismay what unpleasant surprises his successor might have in store for me. He seemed to me to come from the depths of a very old and mysterious form of humanity, travelling from his capital to the shores of Europe, slowly, by easy stages, as in the mediæval times, across deserts and mountains and blue-domed dead cities, escorted by a fabulous baggage-train of rare stuffs, of praying-carpets, of marvellous jewels, an army of turbaned horsemen, a swarm of officials, a harem of dancing-girls and a long file of camels.
I asked myself if I too would be obliged to assist at sacrifices of heifers and to console unpaid tradesmen, all to be finally pointed out by His Majesty as a "substitute" under the knife of the guillotine.
However, I was needlessly alarmed: in Persia, thank goodness, the Shahs succeed, but do not resemble one another. I became fully aware of this when I was admitted into the intimacy of our new guest. Muzaffr-ed-Din had nothing in common with his father. He was an overgrown child, whose massive stature, great bushy moustache, very kind, round eyes, prominent stomach and general adiposity formed a contrast with his backward mental condition and his sleepy intelligence. He had, in fact, the brain of a twelve-year-old schoolboy, together with a schoolboy's easy astonishment, candour and curiosity. He busied himself exclusively with small things, the only things that excited and interested him. He was gentle, good-natured, an arrant coward, generous at times and extremely capricious, but his whims never went so far as to take pleasure in the suffering of others. He loved life, was enormously attached to it, in fact; and he liked me too with a real affection, which was spontaneous and, at times, touching:
"Paoli, worthy Paoli," he said to me one day, in an expansive mood, fixing his round pupils upon me, "you ... my good, my dear domestic!"
When I appeared surprised and even a little offended at the place which he was allotting me in the social scale:
"His Majesty means to say," explained the grand vizier, "that he looks upon you as belonging to the family. 'Domestic' in his mind means a friend of the house, according to the true etymology of the word, which is derived from the Latin domus...."
The intention was pretty enough; I asked no more, remembering that Muzaffr-ed-Din spoke French with difficulty and employed a sort of negro chatter to express his thoughts.