with the accounts, but directed them to give a certificate to the effect that the vouchers produced by Dupleix had reference to the public service. He thus avoided placing on record an acknowledgment of the sums due to Dupleix. But this was not all. Dupleix had been in the habit of advancing large sums from his own private resources to the native allies of France. These advances had been made on the security of certain districts, from the revenues of which they were repayable. At the time of Godeheu's arrival some of the moneys so advanced had been repaid, others, to a very large amount, were still standing over. At the rate however at which the repayments were coming in, the lender would be reimbursed during the following year. But Godeheu, bent on ruining Dupleix, imprisoned the native agent who held the original documents, and declared that the advances had been made by his predecessor for his own private advantage, and not for the benefit of the State. He refused also to allow a bill drawn by the Company in favour of Dupleix to be cashed at Pondichery. Having thus effectually ruined the man who had all but won an Empire for France he allowed him to depart, beggared but not dishonoured, blasted in fortune, cheated out of the fruits of his then ripening labours.
'England,' wrote M. Xavier Raymond in his admirable work on India[1], 'has been much admired and often cited for having resolved the great problem of
- ↑ L'Univers Pittoresque, voL ii, L'Inde. Paris, 1853.
