Travels in India (Tavernier) 160.3.1

160.3.1

I must now return to the Directors and the members of the Company with whom I dined at Middelburg. Most of them desired that I should inform them of the manner in which the agents of the Company behaved in Persia and India, and the others asked me to speak of my travels. I preferred to satisfy the latter, and avoided all reference to trade. It is true that if I had not had some suspicion of the deception which they played me subsequently, I would possibly have told them many things from which they might have derived benefit. For in the space of the forty years during which I have often visited Persia and India, there have been few persons in the service of the Company who have not told me of all the tricks they made use of in order to acquire money. In return for this confidence, when they were about to return home, I endeavoured to furnish them with a good parcel of diamonds, which occupy but little space. If then I had declared to these gentlemen what I knew of this matter, they would have gained much in studying the record I should have given, and by discovering the knavery of their servants, and by doing rightly by me, their conscience would not be charged as it is, concerning the 17,500 florins which General Vanderlin and his Council seized from me at Batavia.