For my part, I consider it a great advantage that we have learned more and more about the nature of these territories and lands, the character of the inhabitants, the means of helping them, [306 i.e., 308] the obstacles which are liable to arise against the progress of the work, and the help that must be given to oppose the enemy. The architect who makes and unmakes his plans and models even to the fifth and sixth time, does not think, for all that, that he has not accomplished anything in his first and second trials, which he has destroyed to stop at the sixth; for he will say that the perfection of the last, lies only in the imperfections of the first. It is thus also with the orator, who erases and scratches out twice and three times what he has written in his first enthusiasm, because the beauty and force of the ideas and words, which he substitutes for the fourth time, come to him from his rejection of, and dissatisfaction with, the preceding ones. So, in truth, it is not otherwise that God usually gives us prudence and the better management of things, only [307 i.e., 309] through various experiences, and for the most part through our own faults and those of others. We have done, then, a part of what we intended to do; we have experimented, we know what is necessary and what is harmful, and wherein lies the principal part of the work. The means which have been employed have not been so great, nor so proportioned to a higher purpose, that we should be greatly dissatisfied with what God gives us.