work in despair, and I continued almost alone with the prince.

Imagining no time more proper to make the proposal I was sent with than
while his passion was still hot against the monks, I presented him with
two ounces of gold and two plates of silver, with some other things of
small value, and was so successful that he gratified me in all my
requests, and gave us leave to return to Adicora, where we were so
fortunate to find our huts yet uninjured and entire.

About this time the fathers who had stayed behind at Fremona arrived with
the new viceroy, and an officer fierce in the defence of his own
religion, who had particular orders to deliver all the Jesuits up to the
Turks, except me, whom the Emperor was resolved to have in his own hands,
alive or dead. We had received some notice of this resolution from our
friends at court, and were likewise informed that the Emperor, their
master, had been persuaded that my design was to procure assistance from
the Indies, and that I should certainly return at the head of an army.
The patriarch's advice upon this emergency was that I should retire into
the woods, and by some other road join the nine Jesuits who were gone
towards Mazna. I could think of no better expedient, and therefore went
away in the night between the 23rd and 24th of April with my comrade, an
old man, very infirm and very timorous. We crossed woods never crossed,
I believe, by any before: the darkness of the night and the thickness of
the shade spread a kind of horror round us; our gloomy journey was still
more incommoded by the brambles and thorns, which tore our hands; amidst
all these difficulties I applied myself to the Almighty, praying him to
preserve us from those dangers which we endeavoured to avoid, and to
deliver us from those to which our flight exposed us. Thus we travelled
all night, till eight next morning, without taking either rest or food;
then, imagining ourselves secure, we made us some cakes of barley-meal
and water, which we thought a feast.

We had a dispute with our guides, who though they had bargained to
conduct us for an ounce of gold, yet when they saw us so entangled in the
intricacies of the wood that we could not possibly get out without their
direction, demanded seven ounces of gold, a mule, and a little tent which
we had; after a long dispute we were forced to come to their terms. We
continued to travel all night, and to hide ourselves in the woods all
day: and here it w