were lost; and they were obliged to return without accomÂplishing anything.
It
is the custom, when the vessels are about returning to Holland, that
the General entertains all the principal officers of the fleet with the
Council and the most important personages of the town, and he did me
the honour to invite me also. The repast commenced at 2 p.m., and at
four tables there were fully sixty persons of both sexes. I was seated
between the Major and the Secretary of the Grand Council; they were
both men of worth, whose conversation was agreeable. We had been seven
or eight hours at table, and they had already asked the General if it
pleased him that the comedy should commence, which the youth of the
town were to enact; whereupon I reminded the Major that he had promised
me that as soon as I had delivered my papers to the Council they would
give me an order to be paid on my arrival in Holland. I told him that
the Secretary, to whom I had spoken in the morning, had given me reason
to hope that I should have it before dinner ; but the Secretary then
said in my ear that I need not expect it, and when he said this he rose
from the table to go to the comedy. I then asked our Vice-Admiral and
three or four merchants who were returning to Holland to bear in mind
what I should say to the General and his reply to me, and serve me as
witnesses before the Directors of the Company when we arrived in
Holland. In the entre actes of the comedy everyone took a glass
and drank healths, and the General, glass in hand, addressed our
Vice-Admiral, ' I drink your health,' said he, ' and that of M.
Tavernier, whom may God vouchsafe to bless and protect on sea during
this journey, as he has done in all the others which he has made by
land.' I replied that I thanked him, and that I sincerely hoped that
God would bless our journey, but that I should not make it without
displeasure and without resentment for their failure to keep their
promise—neither he nor his Council having kept the promise which they
had made me to give an order on my handing them my rekenings, which
amounted to 17,500 guilders ; that now, when they had the papers which
they asked for, they mocked me ; but that I assured them I would
