After Dinner, I Moved About The Debt Due By Groo, And Told Him
Of The Delays.
He desired me to say no more, as he had undertaken that
business; that Groo, at his orders, was finishing accounts with a
jeweller, and he had given orders, as the money was paid, that it should
remain in the hands of the cutwall for us.
This I found afterwards to be
true, and the cutwall has promised to finish in three days, desiring me
to send no more to Asaph Khan on that business.
I must not omit to mention here, an anecdote of baseness or favour, call
it which you please. When the prisons are full of condemned men, the
king commands some to be executed, and sends others to his omrahs, to be
redeemed at a price. This he esteems a courtesy, as giving the means of
exercising charity: But he takes the money, and so sells the virtue.
About a month before our remove, he sent to me to buy three Abyssinians,
whom they suppose to be all Christians, at the price of forty rupees
each. I answered, that I could not purchase men as slaves, as was done
by others, by which they had profit for their money; but that I was
willing to give twenty rupees each for them in charity, to save their
lives and restore them to liberty. The king was well pleased with my
answer, and ordered them to be sent me. They expected the money, which I
was in no haste to give, and even hoped it had been forgotten.
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