Towards the close of the seventeenth century Louis XIV. of France had begun to make the influence of his country widely felt in the Mediterranean, though before his time Richelieu had cast an eye over the Levant with the idea of supporting French commerce. Louis XIV. even entered into an alliance with Turkey, in which he cut rather a foolish figure, but which at any rate enabled him to send Frenchmen to report on the trade of Egypt. It is stated that the result of these inquiries was a scheme for the conquering and colonising of Egypt which was laid before that monarch and remained in the archives of the French government until it caught the attention of Napoleon Bonaparte when he rose to power. Louis XIV. either did not notice the project or put it aside; but nevertheless, during half of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century Frenchmen were beginning to interest themselves in the exploration of Egypt, Abyssinia, and the Nile. When the Portuguese missionaries were irrevocably expelled from Abyssinia, or were slaughtered in that country by Abyssinians, or died under the hands of the Turks of Masawa or Suakin, it was suggested to the Pope that perhaps French missionaries might prove more acceptable to Ethiopia. Not a few Roman Catholic Abyssinians found their way to Rome during the seventeenth century, where, as we know, they imparted very valuable information to the learned Saxon philologist Ludolf. These Ethiopians seem to have conveyed the idea to the Papal Court that it was not so much Roman Christianity that was objected to as the political ambitions of the Portuguese. But later on in the seventeenth century _any_ missionaries teaching the Latin rite had become unacceptable to the Abyssinians, and the project of sending French Capuchins to take the place of the Portuguese Jesuits came to nothing. But the Emperor of Abyssinia had one reason for regretting the expulsion of the Jesuits,--an expulsion to which he personally was less favourable than were his powerful vassal chiefs of Tigre and Amhara,--he had relied on the Portuguese Jesuits for medical treatment.