MILLER. How? What? Go along with you, baron! What do you take me for? There is time enough for payment. Do not put such an affront on me; we are not together for the last time, please God.
FERDINAND. Who can tell? Take your money. It is for life or death.
MILLER (laughing). Oh! for the matter of that, baron! As regards that I don't think I should run much risk with you!
FERDINAND. You would run the greatest. Have you never heard that youths have died. That damsels and youths have died, the children of hope, the airy castles of their disappointed parents? What is safe from age and worms has often perished by a thunderbolt. Even your Louisa is not immortal.
MILLER. God gave her to me.
FERDINAND. Hear me! I say to you your Louisa is not immortal. That daughter is the apple of your eye; you hang upon her with your whole heart and soul. Be prudent, Miller! None but a desperate gamester stakes his all upon a single cast. The merchant would be called a madman who embarked his whole fortune in one ship. Think upon this, and remember that I warned you. But why do you not take your money?
MILLER. How, baron, how? All that enormous purse? What can you be thinking of?
FERDINAND. Upon my debt! There! (Throws a heavy purse on the table; some gold drops out.) I cannot hold the dross to eternity.
MILLER (astonished). Mercy on us! what is this? The sound was not of silver! (Goes to the table and cries out in astonishment.) In heaven's name, baron, what means this? What are you about? You must be out of your mind! (Clasping his hands.) There it lies! or I am bewitched. 'Tis damnable! I feel it now; the beauteous, shining, glorious heap of gold! No, Satan, thou shalt not catch my soul with this!
FERDINAND. Have you drunk old wine, or new, Miller?