Storia do Mogor 100.6

100.6

As all the merchants knew him, they brought him cloth, and he took delivery up to thirty thousand rupees' worth. He loaded up all this cloth for Surat, continuing himself at Patnah. When came the time for paying the merchants, he, in pursuance of the custom of the country, lighted two candles in the morning as a sign that he had become bankrupt; he sat at his house, with no turban on his head, a simple cloth bound round his loins, his seat an old bit of matting, and a dejected expression on his face. A great tumult arose in the city, and the merchants thronged to learn the cause ; there was a storm of questions, answers, and bad language. To all this he replied with a sad countenance, calmly, and without heat, by the word ' Divalia ' (diwala), which means ' bankrupt' No other response could they get. They carried him off to court, but on the quiet he had given the judge a bribe of five thousand rupees. At the hearing he (Safar) produced the bill of exchange that he got at Agrah upon the sarraf of Patnah, and made the defence that this sarraf was the cause that he, too, was a bankrupt. The judge decreed that the merchants must take the bill of exchange and procure payment for themselves, being fellow-citizens of the sarraf. It was unreasonable that a stranger should suffer in a foreign country. The Armenian, being thus absolved, made his way to Surat [61].