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"You must forgive me, my dear child, for leaving you all these worries," added Abbe Rose. "I tried to get the good Sister, who is nursing me, to take an interest in these poor people, but when I spoke to her of the big Old'un, she was so alarmed that she made the sign of the cross. And it's the same with my worthy friend Abbe Tavernier. I know nobody of more upright mind.
Another favourite doctrine of the earlier visitors to the East seems to me to be equally fallacious; PYRARD, BERNIER, PHILLIPE, THEVENOT, and other travellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, proclaimed the superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, in size, strength, and sagacity, above those of all other parts of India ; and TAVERNIER in particular is supposed to have stated that if a Ceylon elephant be introduced amongst those bred in any other place, by an instinct of nature they do him homage by laying their trunks to the ground, and raising them reverentially.
"You will soon see what a cur he is," whispered the pupil in disgrace; as soon as the teacher had returned to his seat. M. Tavernier struck his ruler on the edge of his chair, and, having reestablished silence, invited pupil Godard to recite his lesson.
Master Tavernier discourses at some length on the ingenious methods adopted by the laborers to conceal diamonds which they have found, sometimes swallowing them, and he tells of one miner who hid in the corner of his eye a stone of two carats!
This question is discussed at length in an article by the author, entitled "The Taj and its Designers," published in the June number of the Nineteenth Century and After, 1903. Tavernier says twenty-two years probably including all the accessory buildings. The present garden is a jungle, planted by a European overseer without any understanding or feeling for the ideas of the Mogul artists.
M. Tavernier received the newcomer with a sickly smile, which disappeared as soon as M. Batifol left the room. "Go and take your place in that empty seat there, in the third row," said M. Tavernier, in an indifferent tone. He deigned, however, to conduct Amedee to the seat which he was to occupy.
Having passed the ninth preparatory grade, under the direction of the indolent M. Tavernier, always busy polishing his nails, like a Chinese mandarin, the child had for a professor in the eighth grade Pere Montandeuil, a poor fellow stupefied by thirty years of teaching, who secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies, and who, by dint of carrying to and going for his manuscripts at the Odeon, ended by marrying the stagedoor-keeper's daughter.
Tavernier, who was a well-educated man, made a number of interesting observations upon the history, manners and customs, of the countries which he visited. His narrative certainly contributed to give his contemporaries a much more correct idea of the countries of the east than they previously possessed.
M. Tavernier received the newcomer with a sickly smile, which disappeared as soon as M. Batifol left the room. "Go and take your place in that empty seat there, in the third row," said M. Tavernier, in an indifferent tone. He deigned, however, to conduct Amedee to the seat which he was to occupy.
Monsieur Tavernier, who is endued with all the probity which a man can have, without the true religion, makes a step farther than these two historians, and speaks like a Catholic: "St Francis Xavier," says he, "ended in this place his mission, together with his life, after he had established the Christian faith, with an admirable progress in all places through which he passed, not only by his zeal, but also by his example, and by the holiness of his manners.
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