It must--to repeat ourselves--have been a tremendous temptation having to live, as these early writers or clerks to John Company had, on the very verge of Tom Tiddler's ground--to have only to reach out their hands and touch a totally different world. A world which by virtue of immutable changelessness had not commuted the gold which the years had brought it into luxuries, but had stored it up uselessly in lavish ornamentation and idle, almost unappropriated treasure. Except as a gaud for a woman, a toy for a babe, or a flourish of trumpets for some man who called himself noble, gold in India had practically no value, for the rich man lived in all ways much as the poor man lived. The standard of personal comfort had not risen at all either for the wealthy or the poverty-stricken during the four thousand years and odd since the splendours of Princess Drâupadi's Swayâmvara had been chronicled in the Mâhâbhârata. An instant's thought will show us the effect which this hoarding of every diamond found in Golconda, of every bale of rich stuff made by some leisurely artificer, must have had upon the country. It became full to overflowing with scarcely recognised riches. To English traders, keen on commerce, India must indeed have been the land of Upside-down; a land into which their gold was sucked down at the same time that astounding, almost undreamt-of treasures were literally vomited forth from every petty bazaar. Francois Bernier's views on this matter, and the conclusions which he draws from the indubitable facts which he observed, are so distinctly what may be called conventionally insular, that they serve well to show the attitude of mind in which the West, strong in conviction of its own worth, faced the East, all unfamiliar and startling. "Before I conclude," he says, in a letter addressed to M. Colbert, the French Minister of State, "I wish to explain how it happens that though the gold and silver introduced into the Empire centre finally in Hindustan, they still are not in greater plenty than elsewhere, and the inhabitants have less the appearance of a monied people than those of many other parts of the globe. "In the first place, a larger quantity is melted, re-melted, and wasted in fabricating women's bracelets, both for the hands and feet, chains, ear-rings, nose and finger rings, and a still larger quantity is consumed in manufacturing embroideries; _alachas_ or striped silken stuffs, _touras_ or tufts of golden nets worn on turbans; gold and silver cloths and scarves, turbans, and brocades. The quantity of these articles made in India is incredible."