Although the Courts of England and France were at this time allies, the English and French nations in the Levant continued to be as, without interruption, they had always been, jealous rivals in trade and everything else; and the intercourse between them had not been improved by the character of that alliance: the English felt irritated at the humiliating position in which the policy of Charles placed them, while the French felt proportionately vain of the eminence they owed to the power of Louis. In these circumstances every tiff was magnified into a tempest, as must be the case whenever the point at issue, however trivial in itself, can be brought into any relation with national pride. When men meet each other in a spirit of discord, predisposed at every moment to give or receive offence, how soon is difference converted into hostility, hardened into hatred, exasperated into rage. What folly and outrage may not be expected to ensue! These psychological conditions rendered the incidents Sir John had to deal with serious--even alarming. The first had occurred at the very moment of his landing at Smyrna. A number of French merchants had been sent by their Consul to greet him and to grace his entry into the town. But the cavalcade had scarcely moved when a lively dispute about precedence broke out between the French and the English Factors, and the former--hot-tempered and not overbred Marseillese for the most part--in spite of Consul Rycaut’s endeavours to appease them, left the procession, hurling at the English words unfit for polite ears. After this scene Sir John during his sojourn at Smyrna received from the French “Nation” none of those civilities to which the representative of a Court in alliance with theirs was entitled, nor any mark of respect from the French ships on his departure, though all the other European vessels in the harbour hoisted their flags and fired their guns in his honour. Sir John was sorely vexed: he had intended his advent to be an occasion for strengthening Anglo-French relations, and it had been the signal for fresh animosities. Doubtless he would have offered an explanation to the French Ambassador as soon as he reached Constantinople, but that gentleman was at the time away on a tour through the Levant--visiting the various centres of French enterprise, commercial and religious, and spreading the fame of France over the Orient. Thus the matter remained pending, and meanwhile to the Smyrna incident had been added another at Aleppo.