"I am about to die. Remember that even if I am guilty, I leave a wife and child who are innocent. For them I ask neither rank nor wealth, but at least let them enjoy freedom and life." Having said these words he remained silent and at a signal, the executioner cut him down with a blow of his sword. He fell with a sigh, the last he ever uttered. So died at the age of forty one years, a man who had risen from the petty details of a counting house to the most prominent position in a great Empire. His skill in politics justified his master's choice and he would have been numbered among the greatest public men of his day had his end been as brilliant as his beginning. If his sagacity had been led astray it is not certain whether that he feared that, being a stranger, his most disinterested actions would have been objects of suspicion. Cautious and circumspect as he was he did not fully grasp the situation of present affairs, as his mind dwelt more upon eventualities. His virtues were marred by several faults; passionate and easily moved to anger, he would lose in one day, the fruits of the work of several years. A man of great ambition, he showed all the pettiness of vain-glory. The magnificence in which he lived was a almost an insult to the poverty-stricken nation whom it was thought he had plundered. The produce of every province appeared at his table and four hundred slaves hastened to serve him, to obey the wishes of his guests and to make parade of his opulence. Generous to a fault, he spent upwards of 100,000 crowns on gifts during the space of 3 years. His policy betrayed by the wishes of the moment, blinded him to the fact that bounties of this kind are more apt to give rise to suspicion than to cause happiness. After his conversion to the Roman faith he submitted to all its dogmas and practiced all its precepts and although a public man, he believed he could not dispense with the obligations binding on private individuals. His wife, still languishing in prison, forgot her own sufferings in lamenting the demise of her husband. "Well" she exclaimed "Why is he dead? What was his crime that he should have been treated like a felon." An official, a relative of Pitracha's who was standing near her whispered that his crimes had been the favour he had enjoyed, and his natural abilities. Shortly after this, she and her son were condemned to the humiliation of slavery and she was set free that she might perform her duties. The death of the King and his brothers had happened prior to the execution of Faulcon. It was rumoured by some that the King had been poisoned, while others averred that the weariness of captivity was the cause of his death. Pitracha, who held the fate of his master in his hands, and seeing that the King was on the point of death, thought it politic to compass the destruction of the King's brothers who might have put difficulties in the way of his succession.