On 2 March 1880, on his way from London to Switzerland, Gordon had visited King Leopold II of Belgium in Brussels and was invited to take charge of the Congo Free State. Leopold tried very hard to convince Gordon to enter his service, not least because Gordon was known to be modest in his salary demands, unlike Leopold's current agent in the Congo, Henry Morton Stanley, who received a monthly salary of 300,000 Belgian francs. Gordon rejected Leopold's offers, partly because he was still emotionally attached to the Sudan and partly because he disliked the idea of working for Leopold's Congo Association, which was a private company owned by the King. In April, the government of the Cape Colony offered him the position of commandant of the Cape local forces, which Gordon declined. A deeply depressed Gordon wrote in his letter declining the offer that he knew, for reasons that he refused to explain, that he had only ten years left to live, and he wanted to do something great and grand in his last ten years.