for a husband—particularly on his wedding night—that I seized a stout bamboo which happened by a miraculous chance to be handy, burst open the door and fell to belabouring Donna Inez' confessor, who fled yelling as loud as the heretics I had seen burned the third day after my arrival in Goa. As for my wife, I was proceeding to reproach her bitterly for her conduct, but with the utmost assurance—
"'Very well, sir,' she said, 'you can complain to my father, and I will complain to the Inquisition.'
"'And what complaint will you make, my fine madam?' I asked.
"'I will complain of your interrupting my religious exercises by beating a holy man, who for three years has been known to all the world as my confessor. Begone, sir, you are a heretic; and as I will not live with a heretic, I am going back to my Convent,' and with the words she stalked out proud as a queen.
"As for me, the mere word 'heretic,' look you, had filled me with terror; already I saw myself clothed in a black gown painted with ascending flames; already I saw myself bound feet and neck and waist to the stake on the plain of St. Lazarus! The result was, I made up my mind on the spot; I collected my little hoard, to which I added two or three thousand livres I had saved in my fruit business since coming to Goa. Remembering that I had seen in the roadstead the day before a ship ready to sail for Java, I had myself rowed out to her without a moment's delay, abandoning house, garden and furniture to whoso might choose to take them.
"Luckily the vessel was only waiting for an east wind and a falling tide to take her out of harbour. I arrived on board with the wind in one hand and the tide in the other, so to speak. I agreed to pay the captain ten pagodas for my passage, and I had the satisfaction, just as the first rays of dawn whitened the church roofs of Goa, to feel wind and tide carrying me gently out to sea.
"My precaution had not been in vain; two years afterwards I was burned in effigy on the plain of St. Lazarus.
CHAPTER XIII
A SUTTEE.
"MAN proposes, but God disposes.' This, the truest of all proverbs, seems to have been especially made for the sailor. We started from Goa in the early days of June, a period at which winter is beginning. Now anyone who has not seen the storms of the Malabar coast does not know what storms are. One of these tempests drove us into Calicut, and willy nilly, we had to stay there.
"However, the Indian winters have this advantage, that they include the least possible proportion of cold, but only wind, cloud and lightning; hence fruit ripens as well in winter as in autumn. At the same time anybody who is tired of winter has no great way to go to find another season. He has only to cross the Ghauts, which run from north to south, and in two days, instead of being on the coast of Malabar, he will find himself on the coast of Coromandel, and instead of being drenched by the wintry rains of the Persian Gulf, he will be roasted by the summer heats of the Gulf of Bengal. In all the world there is nothing finer than this stretch of coast, with its palms and cocoa-nuts always green and leafy, which in high winds bend over like the arches of a bridge; nothing finer than these plains and plateaux, these rivers and lakes, in which towns, villages and country houses are sweetly reflected, and which extend from Cape Comorin all the way to Mangalore. When I found we were driven into harbour and the captain told me he could not possibly put to sea again for two or three months, I quickly made up my mind, and being by this time more than half a Hindoo, I resolved to start in trade at Calicut. I could do this without risk of danger, inasmuch as, Calicut belonging to the English, who are Protestants, I had nothing to fear from my friends the Inquisitors of Goa. Besides, within ten leagues of Calicut I had Mahé, which is a French factory, where I could claim protection.
"What struck me first and foremost was the length of the ears everywhere to be seen. Till then I had always considered my own ears to be of a very respectable size, an advantage I owed to the frequency with which my father and
