That his sacred majesty, and the council, who are your
judges, were to their own consciences fully convinced of your guilt,
which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death without the
formal proofs required by the strict letter of the law.
But his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital punishment,
was graciously pleaded to say, that since the council thought the loss
of your eyes too easy a censure, some other might be inflicted
hereafter. And your friend, the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard
again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected concerning the great
charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said that his excellency,
who had the sole disposal of the emperor's revenue, might easily provide
against that evil, by gradually lessening your establishment; by which,
for want of sufficient food, you would grow weak and faint, and lose
your appetite, and consume in a few months; neither would the stench of
your carcase be then so dangerous when it should become more than half
diminished; and, immediately upon your death, five or six thousand of
his majesty's subjects might in two or three days cut your flesh from
your bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant parts, to
prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to
posterity.
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