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babis
, the
sheikhis
and the 
bahais.
I did not omit to mentioned that our word ‘paradise’
comes originally from the Persian word 
‘paradaeza’
which means ‘garden’.
Matthias Webb congratulated me on my apparent erudition, but when I
become encouraged by his praise and suggested making a more regular
contribution he seemed embarrassed and suddenly irritated.
‘I really would like to put you to the test, if you will promise to drop this
annoying habit of peppering your text with barbarian words!’
My face betrayed my surprise and incredulity. Webb had his reasons.
‘The 
Gazette
does not have the means to take on, permanently, a Persian
specialist. However, if you agree to take charge of all the foreign news, and if

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you think you are capable of making distant countries accessible to our
compatriots, there is a place for you on this newspaper. What your articles lose
in profundity they will gain in range.’
We both managed to smile again; he offered me a peace cigar before
continuing:
‘Just yesterday, abroad did not exist for us. The Orient stopped at Cape Cod.
Now suddenly, under the pretext of the end of one century and the start of
another, our peaceful city has been laid hold of by the world’s troubles.’
I must point out that our discussion was taking place in 1899, a little after the
Spanish-American war which took our troops not only to Cuba and Puerto Rico
but also the Philippines. Never before had the United States exercised its
authority so far from its shores. Our victory over the dilapidated Spanish empire
had cost us only two thousand four hundred dead, but in Annapolis, seat of the
Naval Academy, every loss could have been that of a relative, a friend or an
actual or potential fiancé; the most conservative of my fellow citizens saw in
President MacKinley a dangerous adventurer.
That was not Webb’s opinion at all, but he had to pander to his readers’
phobias. To get the point over to me, this serious and greying pater-familias
stood up, uttered a roar, pulled a hilarious face and curled his fingers up as if
they were the claws of a monster.
‘The tough world outside is striding towards Annapolis, and your mission,
Benjamin Lesage, is to reassure your compatriots.’
It was a heavy responsibility, of which I acquitted myself without too much
ado. My sources of information were articles in newspapers from Paris, London
and of course New York, Washington and Baltimore. Out of everything I wrote
about the Boer War, the 1904-5 conflict between the Tsar and the Mikado or the
troubles in Russia, I am afraid that not a single line deserves to go down in
history.
It was only on the subject of Persia that my career as a journalist can be
mentioned. I am proud to say that the 
Gazette
was the first American newspaper
to foresee the explosion which was going to take place and news of which was
going to occupy much column space in the last months of 1906 in all the world’s
newspapers. For the first, and probably the last, time articles from the 
Annapolis
Gazette and Herald
were quoted, often even reproduced verbatim in more than
sixty newspapers in the South and on the East Coast.
My town and newspaper owe that much to me. And I owe it to Shireen. It
was in fact thanks to her, and not to my meagre experience in Persia that I was

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able to understand the full extent of the events which were brewing.
I had not received anything from my princess for over seven years. If she
owed me a response on the matter of the