During this visit to Casbin, Chardin had the honour, as it is vulgarly termed, of presenting two of his countrymen to the shah; and so powerful is the force of habit and prejudice, that this able, learned, and virtuous man really imagined it an honour to approach and converse familiarly with an opium-eating, cruel, and unprincipled sot, merely because he wore a tiara and could sport with the destinies of a great empire! The nazir, in introducing the traveller, observed, “Sire, this is Chardin, your merchant.” To which the shah replied, with a smile, “He is a very dear merchant.”—“Your majesty is right,” added the nazir; “he is a politic man; he has overreached the whole court.” This the minister uttered with a smile; and he had a right to smile, says Chardin, for he took especial care that quite the contrary should happen. Chardin soon after this took his final leave of the court of Persia, and returned by way of Ispahan to Bander-Abassi, whence he purposed sailing by an English ship for Surat. The fear of falling into the hands of the Dutch, then at war with France, prevented him, however, from putting his design into execution; and relinquishing the idea of again visiting Hindostan, he returned to Europe in 1677. Of the latter part of his life few particulars are known. Prevented by religious considerations from residing in his own country, where freedom of conscience was not to be enjoyed, he selected England for his home, where, in all probability, he became acquainted with many of the illustrious men who shed a glory over that epoch of our history. It was in London, also, that he first met with the lady whom he immediately afterward made his wife. Like himself, she was a native of France and a Protestant, forced into banishment by the apprehension of religious persecution. On the very day of his marriage Chardin received the honour of knighthood from the hand of the gay and profligate Charles II. Having now recovered from the fever of travelling, the beautiful Rouennaise in all probability aiding in the cure, Chardin devoted his leisure to the composition of his “Travels’ History,” of which the first volume appeared in London in 1686. While he was employed in preparing the remainder of his works for the press, he was appointed the king’s minister plenipotentiary or ambassador to the States of Holland, being at the same time intrusted with the management of the East India Company’s affairs in that country. His public duties, however, which could not entirely occupy his mind, by no means prevented, though they considerably delayed, the publication of the remainder of his travels; the whole of which appeared, both in quarto and duodecimo, in 1711. Shortly after this he returned to England, where he died in the neighbourhood of London, 1713, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.