Travels in India (Tavernier) 151.2.4

151.2.4

On the sentence which the members of the Council had given, that the Avocat Fiscal should take the cause in hand on the Company’s behalf, three days afterwards he sent me many pages of paper containing written charges, so that I might reply to each. The first demanded that I should declare to what extent M. Constant and I had traded together since we had known one another. The others were only nonsense, and among others that which ordered me to reply to them at all, I, who was in no wise responsible to the Company, and had only come to Batavia to render it a service, and consequently need trouble myself very little about the Fiscal's order. There was a special query which stated that the General and his council wished to know what M. Constant had done at Bandar Abbás, where he had been sent as commander; that they were aware of the fact that we were together day and night, and that consequently I must be well acquainted with his affairs. They were right in this, but I was not bound to render an account to them. This lasted fully four or five weeks, during which an officer came to summon me several times to accompany him to the Town Hall to give a reply. That which I gave was always the same, that I knew nothing of M. Constant's affairs, and that when he did anything he did not call me in to give him advice. As they saw they could get nothing from me by sweetness, they commenced to threaten me, saying they would arrest me.