Travels in India (Tavernier) 149.2.7

149.2.7

and it was believed that some one had administered to him some kind of slow poison. On the occasion of the third audience which he had with the King, who knew that he had lived for so long a time in languor and without appetite, he asked him if he had ever formerly kept any girl of the country, and how he had left her, if by mutual agreement or whether he had sent her away by force. He admitted that he had left one in order to get married in his own country, and that since that time he had always been languishing and indisposed, upon which the King said to three of his physicians, who were by his side, that having heard the cause of the ambassador’s sickness he would give them fifteen days to cure him, and that if they did not accomplish it in that time he would cause them all to be executed. These physicians having replied that they would answer to him for the cure of the ambassador, provided he consented to take the remedies which they would give him, M. Croc resolved to consent. They gave him in the morning a decoction, and in the evening a small pill, and at the end of nine days a great fit of vomiting seized him. It was thought he would die of the strange efforts which he made ; and at length he vomited a bundle of hair as large as a small nut, after which he was at once healed. Subsequently the King took him to a rhinoceros hunt, and invited him to give the mortal shot to the animal.