“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 kind of fowl, after which they fed the faster and grew sooner fat; that his sacred majesty and the council, who are your judges, were in 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 law.
“But his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital punishment, was graciously pleased to say, that since the council thought the loss of your eyes too easy a censure, some other may be inflicted hereafter. And your friend the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected concerning the great charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said that his excellency, who had the sole disposal of the emperor’s revenue, might easily provide against that evil by gradually lessening your establishment; by which, for want of sufficient food, you will grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite, and consequently decay and consume in a few months; neither would the stench of your carcass be then so dangerous, when it should become more than half diminished; and immediately upon your death, five or six thousand of his majesty’s subjects might, in two or three days, cut your flesh from your bones, take it away by cartloads, and bury it in distant parts, to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to posterity.
“Thus by the great friendship of the secretary, the whole affair was compromised. It was strictly enjoined that the project of starving you by degrees should be kept a secret; but the sentence of putting out your eyes was entered on the books; none dissenting except Bolgolam the admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist upon your death, she having borne perpetual malice against you.