155. THE MONEY CHANGERS.
Teniers (Flemish: 1610-1694). See under last picture.
A man and his wife—usurers, we may suppose—counting their money. There is all the miser's misery in the withered careworn faces, all the miser's greed in the thin, tremulous hands. The man alone seems not quite to like some transaction which they are discussing; the woman—Portia's prerogative of mercy being reversed—seems to be thinking, "Come, man, don't be a fool: a bond is a bond."