In 1773 the director of the VOC factory in Canton, A.F. l'Heureux, requested permission from Gentlemen Seventeen to return home. He was already seventy years old and wrote: ‘It is hard and discouraging for an honest and faithful servant to find that Divine Providence had afflicted him with illnesses incurable in these parts… It is hard and discouraging for such a one to find himself deprived of his reward, perhaps the last reward for all his labour And may there not be other reasons that force us, however unwillingly, to quit these lands and the service of Your Excellencies? Are there no ties with our society, no ties forged by nature, or are we tied wholly and solely to the Company?’!.