Xv IN THE CAPITAL OF THE KAJARS 159
and, accompanied by Count d'Apchier, I drove out to Fehrabad, the newly built, exceedingly singular pavilion-like château, an hour's journey from Teheran, where His Majesty was staying. The court minister, Vezir Darbar, a Tatar from Azerbeijan, received us and led us up to the higher regions of the château, where the Shah awaited us in a small plain room and surrounded by a score of gentlemen.
There stood the unfortunate, pale and worn, prematurely aged shadow of a despot, clad in a very simple black costume, without the least decoration, and with the usual black kullah on his head ; but he smiled affably, gave me his soft, limp hand, spoke to me in the Tatar tongue, and inquired into my experiences on the way from Trebizond and my plans for the future, and bade me not to forget to send him my next narrative of travel, in which he would be glad to see his portrait inserted. The first part of his request was never to be fulfilled, for he died little more than a year after ; but the second I have complied with the more readily that he presented me with his portrait with the autographic inscription Sultan Muzaffar-ed-din Shah Kajar, or " From the ruler Muzaffar-ed-din, the King, the Kajar." I had brought with me a letter from King Oskar in the florid Oriental style, which the Shah took and handed to Mushir-ed-Dovleh, with the order that it should be translated into Persian without delay. And herewith the audience came to an end and we drove back to Teheran.
Muzaffar-ed-din is regarded as a decayed and decrepit man, and an incapable ruler, who is freely criticised by high and low in the streets and market-places. Persia had been infected by the ferment in Russia, and a constitution was demanded, while no one clearly understood the meaning of the word, and the Persian people was not ripe for self-government. Ten thousand men gathered together in the large mosques to exchange opinions, the mushchids and mollahs held revolutionary conferences in Shah Abdul Azim, where the Shah's European journeys were condemned, and measures were proposed to preserve the country from complete ruin. How this seething unrest,
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