"From public taxes you gain, your expenses not included, three hundred thousand ducats."
"Who dares to calculate my accounts?"
"Hang arithmetic if you can. And besides that, from your commerce in leather, jewels, grain, and pepper, you gain a fortune——"
"They are all losing concerns. All are injuring my property. I have made up my mind to give up commerce; perhaps—I have not quite decided yet—I may continue in that of pepper; but no more leather, no more grain; who deals in grain, will die on straw."
"You can do as you please; but will you give me forty thousand ducats?"
"Good heavens, how can you squander so much money?"
"Give it to me, for it is well spent; I use it in procuring friends for you. I expend it among the people, in festivals, in banquets, and in pleasures. The young men get accustomed to splendor and luxury; I enervate them; cow them down; enfeeble their souls; take away the dignity of their minds and the strength of their bodies; I prepare for the seed, and you can plant what you wish."
"You are ever the same strange mortal. You shall have the forty thousand ducats; but you must give me a mortgage on your Pisan estates, to restore them by instalments——"
"Oh! As for that, I will give you as many bonds as you wish."
"Besides that——"