_ 218 _ On the following Friday, 18th of the month, when the captain had been given his present for there are captains in all these places, and the passing caravans have this custom, we struck camp. A little after midday we had gone about two leagues, for we rarely did more, and often less, we camped in a plain near a mill, where we spent what was left of the day. On the Saturday the Mother Superior was very weak, from her illness, from the hardships of the journey and her great age, which also did not help her for she was already past sixty-five years of age. I was aware from her pulse that she could not survive the following day. I caused her to make an inventory of all the jewellery, pearls, gems and pieces of gold which she kept very secretly in her tent. Galeaço, my friend, Simao Fernandes, the Armenian who accompanied her, and I became her executors, each with his copy of the inventory and the will, and this she approved. In these documents she provided that everything should be handed over in Aleppo to the Father Superior of Jerusalem if he was there, and, if not, we were to go to the Holy Sepulchre to hand it over, and that everything was to be spent on the building in Bethlehem; this had been her intention when she had asked for it, and of those who had given it.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTg0NzAy