persecuting tendencies of his colleagues, who had already learned to
dread the presence of Babite missionaries. At the bidding of the
governor, however, who had some faith in the Bab and hoped for the
best, a conference was arranged between the mullas and the Bab
(poor man!) at the governor's house. The result was that Minuchihr
Khan declared that the mullas had by no means proved the reformer to
be an impostor, but that for the sake of peace he would at once send
the Bab with an escort of horsemen to the capital. This was to all
appearance carried out. The streets were crowded as the band of
mounted men set forth, some of the Isfahanites (especially the
mullas) rejoicing, but a minority inwardly lamenting. This, however,
was only a blind. The governor cunningly sent a trusty horseman with
orders to overtake the travellers a short distance out of Isfahan, and
bring them by nightfall to the governor's secret apartments or (as
others say) to one of the royal palaces. There the Bab had still to
spend a little more than four untroubled halcyon months.

But a storm-cloud came up from the sea, no bigger than a man's hand,
and it spread, and the destruction wrought by it was great. On March
4, 1847, the French ambassador wrote home stating that the governor of
Isfahan had died, leaving a fortune of 40 million francs. [Footnote:
_AMB_, p. 242.] He could not be expected to add what the
Babite tradition affirms, that the governor offered the Bab all
his riches and even the rings on his fingers, [Footnote: _TN_,
pp. 12, 13, 264-8; _NH_, p. 402 (Subh-i-Ezel's narrative),
cp. pp. 211, 346.] to which the prophet refers in the following
passage of his famous letter to Muhammad Shah, written from Maku:

'The other question is an affair of this lower world. The late
Meu'timed [a title of Minuchihr Khan], one night, made all the