"Still as prejudiced against the town as ten years ago? What! Can you not bear to look at it through seven palings?"
"I wouldn't have it as a gift, if you threw it at me! I don't need it at all, but it can't live without me."
"So you say!"
"So I say! I have meat and hay, beer and bread, fuel and timber, house and clothing; what do I want with you then? I build my house, I plough my field, I cut my wood; my old woman spins my yarn, weaves my coat, bakes my bread, and brews my beer. What do you do? You tax my crop; you impose tolls on my wood; you empty my granary. You settle down on a stone as bald as the palm of my hand; you neither sow nor plough, but you reap and gather into barns; you eat my bread and drink my beer; you burn my wood and spin my wool; you sit there like a lazy monk and take tithe, and what do you give me for it?"
"Listen! Listen!" stammered Paul. "Don't you get my salt?"
"Your salt! You make no salt; and if you had not grabbed at it, so that we needed you as a middleman, you could not grind us down. And your sugar? I do not need your sugar, I have my bees!"
"Don't you get my iron?"
"Your iron! Where do you dig that up? In the gutters? What!"
"Don't you get my wine?"
"Where do you plant it? On the roofs?"