goodwill, he adds a few months to the period, but when that time is elapsed, all favour ceases, and the service must be performed six years gratuitously. There was one Vasiley Tretyack Dolmatov, a favourite of the prince, and one of his private secretaries, who, when appointed ambassador to the Emperor Maximilian, and receiving orders to make his preparations, declared that he had not the means and appurtenances necessary for such a journey; upon which he was immediately seized in Bielosero, and thrown into prison for life. After his death, which was most miserable, his property, both real and personal, was seized by the prince for himself; and although he thus acquired three thousand florins in ready money, he did not give even a farthing to the brothers and heirs of the deceased. Independent of common report, one Ivan, a scribe, who was appointed by the prince to supply me with the daily necessaries of life, confessed that this was the case, and that he had him in his custody at the time that he was taken. The two brothers of Vasiley likewise, Feodore and Zacharias, who were appointed my purveyors on my return from Moscow to Smolensko, confirmed his statement.
Whatever articles of value ambassadors who have been sent to foreign princes bring back with them, the prince places in his own treasury, saying, that he will recompense them in some other manner, which manner is as I have described above. For when the ambassador, the Knes Ivan Posetzen Yaroslavski, was sent with Semen (i.e., Simeon) Trofimov as his secretary, to the court of Charles V, they were presented by the emperor with heavy torques and chains of gold, and with Spanish money, and that in gold; and also by my master, the emperor’s brother Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, with cups of silver and baskets of gold and silver, and German money in gold; but when they returned with us to Moscow, the prince immediately on their arrival took away from them the chains and cups, and the greater part
