The story was that they had been apprehended in the act of breaking into
the house of Monsieur Sinfray. Plenty of witnesses were forthcoming to
give evidence against them; such can be purchased outside any cutcherry
in India for a few rupees. The men were convicted. Some were given a
choice between execution and service in the Nawab's army; others were
sentenced offhand to a term of imprisonment, and these considered
themselves lucky in escaping with their lives. In vain they protested
their innocence and pleaded that a messenger might be sent to Calcutta;
the Nawab was known to be so much incensed against the English that the
fact of their being Company's servants would probably avail them nothing.
About the same time that the men were being condemned, a two-ox hackeri,
such as was used for the conveyance of pardarnishin {literally, sitting
behind screens} women, left the house of Monsieur de Bonnefon and drove
inland for some five miles. The curtains were closely drawn, and the
people who met it on the road wondered from what zenana the ladies thus
screened from the public gaze had come. The team halted at a lonely house
surrounded by a high wall, once the residence of a zamindar, now owned by
Coja Solomon of Cossimbazar, and leased to a fellow Armenian of
Chandernagore. It had been hired more than once by Monsieur Sinfray, the
secretary to the Council at Chandernagore and a persona grata with the
Nawab, for al fresco entertainments got up in imitation of the fetes at
Versailles.
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