The French Emperor had, it was reported, flung away Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet, and directed his minister, as Bahá’u’lláh Himself asserts, to address to its Author an irreverent reply. The Grand Vizir of ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, it is reliably stated, blanched while reading the communication addressed to his Imperial master and his ministers, and made the following comment: “It is as if the king of kings were issuing his behest to his humblest vassal king, and regulating his conduct!” Queen Victoria, it is said, upon reading the Tablet revealed for her remarked: “If this is of God, it will endure; if not, it can do no harm.” It was reserved for Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh, however, to wreak, at the instigation of the divines, his vengeance on One Whom he could no longer personally chastise by arresting His messenger, a lad of about seventeen, by freighting him with chains, by torturing him on the rack, and finally slaying him. To this despotic sovereign Bahá’u’lláh, Who denounced him as the “Prince of Oppressors,” and as one who would soon be made “an object-lesson for the world,” had written: “Look upon this Youth, O king, with the eyes of justice; judge thou, then, with truth concerning what hath befallen Him. Of a verity, God hath made thee His shadow amongst men, and the sign of His power unto all that dwell on earth.” And again: “O king! Wert thou to incline thine ears unto the shrill of the Pen of Glory and the cooing of the Dove of Eternity ... thou wouldst attain unto a station from which thou wouldst behold in the world of being naught save the effulgence of the Adored One, and wouldst regard thy sovereignty as the most contemptible of thy possessions, abandoning it to whosoever might desire it, and setting thy face toward the horizon aglow with the light of His countenance.” And again: “We fain would hope, however, that His Majesty the _Sh_áh will himself examine these matters, and bring hope to the hearts. That which We have submitted to thee is indeed for thine highest good.” This hope, however, was to remain unfulfilled. It was indeed shattered by a reign which had been inaugurated by the execution of the Báb, and the imprisonment of Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-_Ch_ál of Ṭihrán, by a sovereign who had repeatedly instigated Bahá’u’lláh’s successive banishments, and by a dynasty that had been sullied by the slaughter of no less than twenty thousand of His followers. The _Sh_áh’s dramatic assassination, the ignoble rule of the last sovereigns of the House of Qájár, and the extinction of that dynasty, were signal instances of the Divine retribution which these horrid atrocities had provoked.