_ 59 _ refrain from writing of them to you and, even though I name certain persons that may make Your Highness take me for a man who writes of others, faults, God knows the intention that I have in doing it and let Him be my judge. The captains of the fortresses haven taken such liberties, seeing that they are allowed to do as they like without punishment, that when this past year the viceroy sent Jeronimo Ruiz, Your Highness's former agent, with Dom Antão to Ormuz and to Catyfa as magistrate with powers to act in the Treasury the better to effect dispatch, as he arrived before the city to make things ready for the fleet. He learned on the way that a man was taking a foist loaded with pepper and that another man, married in Ormuz, had helped him to save it because he had a share in it and together they sent it to Bassora, and he had already been proved guilty in an inquiry that I held over him there last year and the Court had ordered his arrest in order to proceed against him, wherefor the said Jeronimo Ruiz, upon arrival in Ormuz, ordered this man to be arrested. Dom Alvaro took this so badly that he summoned him and insulted him, calling him a Jewish cur and other ugly names, and set this man free and gave the other a safe-conduct after it had been proved that both were trading in
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