e had received, he would freely
offer his sentiments; that if his majesty, in consideration of your
services, and pursuant to his own merciful disposition, would please to
spare your life, and only give orders to put out both your eyes, he
humbly conceived that, by this expedient, justice might in some measure
be satisfied, and all the world would applaud the lenity of the emperor,
as well as the fair and generous proceedings of those who have the honor
to be his counsellors: that the loss of your eyes would be no impediment
to your bodily strength, by which you might still be useful to his
majesty: that blindness is an addition to courage, by concealing dangers
from us: that the fear you had for your eyes was the greatest difficulty
in bringing over the enemy's fleet: and it would be sufficient for you
to see by the eyes of the ministers, since the greatest princes do no
more.

[Illustration]

This proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole
board. Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but rising
up in fury, said he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his
opinion for preserving the life of a traitor: that the services you had
performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of
your crimes: that you, who extinguished the fire in that unprincipled
manner, might at another time inundate and drown the whole palace; and
the same strength, which enabled you to bring over the enemy's fleet,
might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back: that he had
good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as
treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt acts, so he
accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you
should be put to death.

The treasurer was of the same opinion. He showed to what straits his
majesty's revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which
would soon grow insupportable. That the secretary's expedient of putting
out your eyes was so far from being a remedy against this evil, that it
would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of
blinding some sort of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew
sooner fat. That his sacred majesty, and the council, who are your
judges, were to their own consciences fully convinced of your guilt,
which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death without the
formal proofs required by the strict letter of the l