Besides this, M. de Maillet saw Hagi Ali afterwards at Cairo, where he reproached him with his cruel behaviour, both to Poncet and to friar Justin, another monk that had come along with him from Ethiopia. Maillet then must have been fully instructed of Poncet’s whole life and conversation in Ethiopia, and needed not the Italian’s supposed communication to know whether or not he had been in Ethiopia. Besides, Maillet makes use of him as the forerunner of the other embassy he was then preparing to Gondar, and to that same king Yasous, which would have been a very strange step had he doubted of his having been there before. Supposing all this not enough, still we know he returned by Jidda, and the consul corresponded with him there. Now, how did he get from Bartcho to the Red Sea without passing the capital, and without the king’s orders or knowledge? Who franked him at those number of dangerous barriers at Woggora, Lamalmon, the Tacazzé, Kella, and Adowa, where, though I had the authority of the king, I could not sometimes pass without calling force to my assistance? Who freed him from the avarice of the Baharnagash, and the much more formidable rapacity of that murderer the Naybe, who, we have seen in the history of this reign, attempted to plunder the king’s own factor Musa, though his master was within three days journey at the head of an army that in a few hours could have effaced every vestige of where Masuah had stood? All this, then, is a ridiculous fabrication of lies; the work, as I have before said, of those who were concerned in the affair of the unhappy Du Roule. Poncet, having lost all credit, retired from Paris in disgrace, without any further gratification than that which he at first received. He carried to Cairo with him, however, a gold watch and a mirror, which he was to deliver to the consul as a present to his companion Murat, whose subsistence was immediately stopped, and liberty given him to return to Ethiopia. Nor did Maillet’s folly stop here. After giving poor Murat all the ill-usage a man could possibly suffer, he entrusted him with a Jesuit[74] whom he was to introduce into Ethiopia, where he would certainly have lost his life had not the bad-treatment he received by the way made him return before he arrived at Masuah. This first miscarriage seemed only to have confirmed the Jesuits more in their resolution of producing an embassy. But it now took another form. Politicians and statesmen became the actors in it, without a thought having been bestowed to diminish the enemies of the scheme, or render their endeavours useless, by a superior knowledge of the manners and customs of the country through which this embassy was to pass.