millions, and
do so increase it always out of their own goodwill that we shall be
constrained to forbid them to bring us any more. This is the nature of
gratitude and true thankfulness. For time, which gnaws and diminisheth all
things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of
liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous
thinking of it and remembering it.

Being unwilling therefore any way to degenerate from the hereditary
mildness and clemency of my parents, I do now forgive you, deliver you from
all fines and imprisonments, fully release you, set you at liberty, and
every way make you as frank and free as ever you were before. Moreover, at
your going out of the gate, you shall have every one of you three months'
pay to bring you home into your houses and families, and shall have a safe
convoy of six hundred cuirassiers and eight thousand foot under the conduct
of Alexander, esquire of my body, that the clubmen of the country may not
do you any injury. God be with you! I am sorry from my heart that
Picrochole is not here; for I would have given him to understand that this
war was undertaken against my will and without any hope to increase either
my goods or renown. But seeing he is lost, and that no man can tell where
nor how he went away, it is my will that his kingdom remain entire to his
son; who, because he is too young, he not being yet full five years old,
shall be brought up and instructed by the ancient princes and learned men
of the kingdom. And because a realm thus desolate may easily come to ruin,
if the covetousness and avarice of those who by their places are obliged to
administer justice in it be not curbed and restrained, I ordain and will
have it so, that Ponocrates be overseer and superintendent above all his
governors, with whatever power and authority is requisite thereto, and that
he be continually with the child until he find him able and capable to rule
and govern by himself.

Now I must tell you, that you are to understand how a too feeble and
dissolute facility in pardoning evildoers giveth them occasion to commit
wickedness afterwards more readily, upon this pernicious confidence of
receiving favour. I consider that Moses, the meekest man that was in his
time upon the earth, did severely punish the mutinous and seditious people
of Israel. I consider likewise that Julius Caesar, who was so gracious an
emperor that Cicero said of him