No European scholar has contributed so much to our knowledge of the life and teaching of the Báb as Nicolas. His study of the life of the Báb and his translations of several of the most important books of the Báb remain of unsurpassed value.

Nicolas's father, J.B. Nicolas, was in the French Consular Service in Persia, and Nicolas himself was born at Rasht in Gilan in 1864. According to his own statement, he could speak Persian and Russian even before he learnt his native French. Like his father, he joined the French Consular Service and spent most of his working life in Persia.

Nicolas also derived his inspiration to study the Bábís from Gobineau, but in a manner almost exactly opposite to Browne. According to a statement made by Nicolas, his father had clashed with Gobineau:

Gobineau, arriving at the Legation, imbued with diplomatic prejudices, despising his colleagues, entered into an argument with my father on the subject of a manuscript bought by the latter from a courtier.* My father made some remarks about this which turned my thoughts towards the idea of verifying for myself the background of the matter. Among his papers, he left a critique of Gobineau's book Les Religions et Les Philosophies dan l'Asie Centrale, which encouraged me to do some research and refute its errors, this work having been written without sufficient data with the aid of a Jew that Gobineau had as a teacher of Persian, who could only teach his pupil the little that he knew of the sect. I collected my material largely from a native secretary, ++ Mírzá Ibráhím of Tihrán, who I discovered to be a Bahá'í and who put me in touch with the followers of the sect.77

The Bábi and Bahá'í Religions : Some Contemporary Western Accounts.
edited by Moojan Momen (Oxford : George Ronald, 1981), pages 36-40.