"Something better than this noble Stadt-house!" exclaimed Master Peter. "Where will you find a better architect than Van Campen? And when will Holland be more prosperous than in Van Campen's time? Holland is not what she was; and she will yet look back with a melancholy pride on the century when the Stadt-house was built at Amsterdam."
"You think so much of this place because you have seen nothing like it, I suppose. You have seen Moscow, perhaps?"
Peter had happened to be there once; far inland as it was for a common sailor to go.
"Well; you had better get such a building as this erected there, if you can persuade your emperor to undertake so grand an enterprise; and then we will show you what better things we can do."
"Perhaps our emperor will take you at your word, Mr. Snoek, while he is about building his new city. We have the Kremlin already at Moscow; but our new city would be graced by such an erection as this. Shall I put your idea into the Keiser's head?"
Heins nodded a compassionate assent. Master Peter continued,
"But I must carry my story complete. I must get within those iron doors on the ground floor, which look as if they were meant to shut in a legion of devils. There is not a dyke on all your coast that could not be forced more easily than those doors, if they are as strong as they appear."
"They are thus strong. What defence can be too strong for the forty millions of guilders that are stored in the Bank of Amsterdam?"
Master Peter observed to himself that he must have a view of this treasure-chamber before he left Holland; an observation which Heins overheard, and treated with fitting ridicule, informing the stranger that no foot ever crossed the threshold of the treasure-chambers but those of the reigning burgomasters, who were the administrators of the Bank.
"You say there are forty millions of guilders in those chambers," observed Master Peter. "I should have thought there had been more, considering how extensively your Bank deals with all merchants who tread your quays."