According to the patriarchal ideas of government which prevailed in those days, the relation of father to son involved not merely the idea of a tie of affection connecting an older with a younger person, but it implied something of pre-eminence and authority on the one part, and dependence and subjection on the other. Perhaps Genghis Khan did not mean his proposition to be understood in this sense, but made it solely in reference to the disparity between his own and the sultan's years, for he was himself now becoming considerably advanced in life. However this may be, the sultan was at first not at all pleased with the proposition in the form in which the embassador made it. He, however, listened quietly to Makinut's words, and said nothing until the public audience was ended. He then took Makinut alone into another apartment in order to have some quiet conversation with him. He first asked him to tell him the exact state of the case in respect to all the pretended victories which Genghis Khan had gained, and, in order to propitiate him and induce him to reveal the honest truth, he made him a present of a rich scarf, splendidly adorned with jewels. "How is it?" said he; "has the emperor really made all those conquests, and is his empire as extensive and powerful as he pretends? Tell me the honest truth about it." "What I have told your majesty is the honest truth about it," replied Makinut. "My master the emperor is as powerful as I have represented him, and this your majesty will soon find out in case you come to have any difficulty with him." This bold and defiant language on the part of the embassador greatly increased the irritation which the sultan felt before. He seemed much incensed, and replied in a very angry manner. "I know not what your master means," said he, "by sending such messages to me, telling me of the provinces that he has conquered, and boasting of his power, or upon what ground he pretends to be greater than I, and expects that I shall honor him as my father, and be content to be treated by him only as his son. Is he so very great a personage as this?" Makinut now found that perhaps he had spoken a little too plainly, and he began immediately to soften and modify what he had said, and to compliment the sultan himself, who, as he was well aware, was really superior in power and glory to Genghis Khan, notwithstanding the great extension to which the empire of the latter had recently attained. He also begged that the sultan would not be angry with him for delivering the message with which he had been intrusted. He was only a servant, he said, and he was bound to obey the orders of his master. He assured the sultan, moreover, that if any unfavorable construction could by possibility be put upon the language which the emperor had used, no such meaning was designed on his part, but that in sending the embassage, and in every thing connected with it, the emperor had acted with the most friendly and honorable intentions.