Sultan Caidar Mirisce,[693] the third son and Lieutenant of his father, is eighteen years old, of small stature, most fascinating and handsome in appearance, and excelling in oratory, elegance and horsemanship, and most beloved by his father; he is very fond of hearing people discourse about war, although he does not show himself much fitted for that exercise, from his too delicate and almost feminine nature; he is of good intellect, for his age is grave enough, and shows that he understands the affairs of government, and knows how the other monarchs of the world rule. [Sidenote: Negligence of the king.] [Sidenote: Tyranny of the ministers.] Sultans Mustaffa, Umircan, and Ennit Mirisce, are all three between fourteen and fifteen years old, and show great talent; the others also, between eight and eleven years, are at Carassam for instruction, except a young one of five years, who is with his father, as at that age he is very cheerful and pleasing. The daughters are all married to relations, to whom great possessions are given with them as dowries. The king is in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and the fifty-first of his reign, is of middling stature, well formed in person and features, although dark, of thick lips, and a grisly beard; he is more of a melancholy disposition than anything else, which is known by many signs, but principally by his not having come out of his palace for the space of eleven years, nor having gone once to the chase nor any other kind of amusement, to the great dissatisfaction of his people, who according to the customs of that country, not seeing their king, can only with the greatest difficulty make their petitions, and cannot have a voice in the decisions of justice; so that day and night they cry aloud before the palace for justice, sometimes a thousand, more or less. And the king, hearing the voices, usually orders them to be sent away, saying that there are judges deputed in the country, with whom rests the administration of justice, not taking into consideration that these things are against the tyrannical Judges and Sultans, who usually wait in the street to assassinate the people, seen by me as well as by many other people. I have been told as a fact, that in the book of lawsuits there are written more than ten thousand persons who have been killed during the last eight years. This evil comes principally from the Cuzzi,[694] who, as they do not receive pay, are forced to take bribes, and do so the more, as they see that in the matter of law affairs the king takes no thought or care. Hence it arises that throughout the kingdom the roads are unsafe, and in the houses themselves one runs great dangers, and the Judges nearly all allow themselves to be corrupted by money.