Meanwhile the girl felt her head going round to hear them talk of nothing but money, gold, gain!
"Come Onucz, let us look at the new machinery," said the Mask.
"When did you bring the new machinery here?"
"A long time ago; we have coined a great deal of money since it first came. The work is all the quicker and we need fewer men to work it."
They went into the next room through a low door, all three of them having to bow their heads as they entered, and there they saw a gigantic machine at work between whose revolving cylinders depended the long gold ingots which were gradually reduced to the proper thinness for making gold coins.
"Don't you see, Onucz? Hitherto we wasted too much time and labour in cutting the gold plates thin enough and the edges were always too thick to our great loss. Now the machine rolls them all out uniformly. It only cost 10,000 ducats."
"Very cheap indeed!" cried the old man, who was wearing a ragged sheepskin and yet considered ten thousand ducats a moderate price for a rolling mill.
The Mask took up one of the little glistening plates.
"Do you know, my friend, the name of this?" said he.
"No."