Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/297

SINCERITY OF THE ENVOYS DOUBTED. 285 from the King of the Tartars to King Philip of France, who said that the said King of the Tartars had sent them to say, that if the Christian kings would go into the East against the Saracens, he would assist them. " When they had sojourned a long time in France, they went to the King of England, and told him the same as they had said to the King of France." This same historian adds, that some doubt was entertained whether these envoys were not spies, for they were evidently not Tartars, either by birth or education, but Christians of Georgia. Philip III. nevertheless had them brought to the abbey of Saint Denis, where he was then cele- brating Easter. One of the circumstances connected with these en- voys may, especially as they were Georgians, inspire some doubts of their sincerity, namely, their keeping up the fiction of the conversion of the Grand Khan, with which their predecessors had entertained the Pope and the cardinals. According to them, Kublai, the supreme master of all the Tartars, had received bap- tism, and desired the Pope to send him some persons well versed in divine things, in order that they might instruct his children. The negotiators doubtless con- sidered that they could say nothing more likely to be agreeable to the Pontifical Court, and it does not appear that the repetition of the tale had at all lessened its effect with those who were so very willing to believe it : so easy is it to lap oneself in a sweet delusion con- cerning what one desires very eagerly. The conversion of the Mongols was an object of much solicitude to the Church and the Sovereign Pontiff, but it does not appear that the Tartars really had more sympathy for the Christians than for any other nation, but they