_ 18 _ and I will answer you in full. As for the first point you make that I should decide everything with your advice, it is good that I should do so. Show me your commissions, and if the King orders that I should do so, I will observe them fully; and if you do not have this in your commissions, I tell you that if I do no accomplish or if I do wrong in what I have in mine, only he who gave it me can hold me to account. I say nothing in secret. When you see that I do not do what I should, then you may tell me so as friends, and no more. So let it be understood that you never ask me for anything save what I myself wish to give, since I have no obligation except what I wish. When the matter is such that my own intelligence is not sufficient, then I will help myself with yours, for I know well that you are men of such quality that each one of you could discharge my office, and a greater one besides. Furthermore, as you also thought that we should go to Ormuz first, as to the head and principal city, because on that would depend on what we have to do here, I reply that Ormuz is a bigger problem than you think, and I know that it will give us much to do. It has no experience of suffering the blow that we need to strike, because no one has every touched it to take away its greatness. So, it is necessary to do what I do, and not what it seems to you that I should do. If on the way there
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