boundless mercy, it pleased to deliver me from that excess of misery and bitterness of heart, yea, from that grievous prison, and to restore me happily to my dear fatherland.
When we had bewept ourselves to our heart’s content, had given up all hope, and had returned again to our trade, then, unexpectedly, did the Lord Most High look upon our misery, and of His holy graciousness it pleased Him to assist us, so that a Spanish merchant, named Alfonzo di Strada, who had earned his freedom from a Turkish prison by work and service, and had married and settled in the city of Galata, sent us word by one of our guards, who used to take our gloves and purses to that city to market and sell them, that letters had arrived for us from Christendom, and advised us once more, that is to say, Zahradetzky, the priest John, and myself, to beg leave of absence from the aga, and to entertain hopes of making arrangements for the money. Doubting whether he would let us go, and especially knowing, according to the aga’s information, that it was already too late, we were not much delighted at this message; nevertheless, since it must be so, we allowed ourselves to entreat him to let us go, at any rate, this once more to Galata. But he replied that we were only devising an excuse in order to be able to make an excursion; that previously, when we had time and leave to go about, we had not chosen to exert ourselves about the money; and that now, when it was too late, and we knew that it was too late, we were willing to exert ourselves in earnest. With this answer he left us in sorrow. Nevertheless, in the morning he ordered us three to be summoned out of the tower, asked us whether we intended to trouble ourselves about the money in earnest,
