Besides his other business, Hagi Ali had orders to bring with him a physician, if possible, from Cairo; for Yasous and his eldest son were both of a scorbutic habit, which threatened to turn into a leprosy. Hagi Ali, in former voyages, had been acquainted with a capuchin friar Paschal; and, having received medicines from him before, he now applied to Paschal to return with him into Abyssinia, and undertake the cure of the king. Paschal very readily complied with this, upon condition that he should be allowed to take for his companion a monk of his own Order, friar Anthony; to which Hagi Ali readily consented, happy in being enabled to carry two physicians to his master instead of one. The French consul was soon informed of this treaty with the friar Paschal; and, having very easy means to bring Hagi Ali to his house, he informed him, that neither Paschal nor Anthony were physicians, but that he himself had a man of his own nation, whose merit he extolled beyond any thing that had hitherto been said of Hippocrates or Galen. Hagi Ali very willingly accepted of the condition, and it was agreed that, as Verseau had not appeared, Brevedent above mentioned should attend the physician as his servant. This physician was Charles Poncet, a Frenchman, settled in Cairo, who was (as Mr Maillet says) bred a chymist and apothecary, and, if so, was necessarily better skilled in the effects and nature of medicine than those are who call themselves physicians, and practise in the east. Nothing against his private character was intimated by the consul at this time; and, with all deference to better judgment, I must still think, that if Poncet did deserve the epithets of drunkard, liar, babbler, and thief, which Maillet abundantly bestows upon him towards the end of this adventure, the consul could not have chosen a more improper person as the representative of his master, nor a more probable one to make the design he had in hand miscarry; nor could he, in this case, ever vindicate the preventing Paschal’s journey, who must have been much fitter for all the employments intended than such a man as Poncet was, if one half is true of that which the consul said of him afterwards. Maillet, having so far succeeded, prevailed upon one Ibrahim Hanna, a Syrian, to write five letters, according to his own ideas, in the Arabic language, one of which was to the king, the four others to the principal officers at the court of Abyssinia: doubting, however, whether Ibrahim’s expressions were equal to the sublimity of his sentiments, he directed him to submit the letters to the consideration of one Francis, a monk, capuchin, or friar of the Holy Land. Ibrahim knew not this capuchin; but he was intimate with another Francis of the reformed Franciscan Order, and to him by mistake he carried the letters.