chap, xxix THE DIRECTORS AT MIDDELBURG 323
diseases, and I believe that he often then recalled to mind what I had said to him at Ispahan.
I
must now return to the Directors and the members of the Company with
whom I dined at Middelburg. Most of them desired that I should inform
them of the manner in which the agents of the Company behaved in Persia
and India, and the others asked me to speak of my travels. I preferred
to satisfy the latter, and avoided all referenec to trade. It is true
that if I had not had some suspicion of the deception which they played
me subsequently, I would pos-sibly have told them many things from
which they might have derived benefit. For in the space of the forty
years luring which I have often visited Persia and India, most persons
in the service of the Company have told me all the tricks they made use
of in order to acquire money. In return for this confidence, when they
were about to return some, I endeavoured to furnish them with a good
parcel of diamonds, which occupy but little space. If then I had
declared to these gentlemen what I knew of this matter, they would have
gained much in studying the record I should have given, and by
discovering the knavery of their servants, and by doing rightly by me,
their conscience would not be charged as it is, concerning the 17,500
florins which General Vanderlin and his Council seized from me at
Batavia.
What
astonishes me most is, as I have elsewhere remarked, that when the
General and his Council took from me the value of these 17,500 florins,
they made a hundred promises that I should be paid immediately I set
foot in Holland, but his was not done in spite of all the steps I could
take for recovering. the amount. For when leaving the feast that was
given at Batavia on the departure of the fleet, I took our witnesses of
the fact, namely, our Vice-Admiral and three merchants, to whom, when
taking leave of the General and Council, I said aloud in their presence
that they would be my witnesses if God permitted us to arrive in
Holland or Zealand, and would remember that the General and his council
did not give me on my departure what they had promised, namely, an
order which I could show to the Directors of the Company, by which they
would see that 17,500 florins
y 2
