‘As soon as they were gone he came down and took some nice fresh eggs, and just the same sweet-scented herbs the others had used, and made an omelette just over the hole where he had seen them bury the barrel with the money and the man in it.
‘He had no sooner done so than the man came out all whole and well, and said: “Oh, how many years have I been shut up in that dark place” (though he hadn’t been there half-an-hour) “till you came to deliver me! Therefore all the gold is yours.”
‘Such things can’t be true, so I don’t believe them; but that’s what they tell.’
12
‘And don’t they tell other stories about there being treasures hid about Rome?’
‘Oh, yes; and some of them are true. It is quite certain that ——’ (and she named a very rich Roman prince) ‘found all the money that makes him so rich bricked up in a wall. They were altering a wall, and they came upon some gold. It was all behind a great wall, as big as the side of a room—all full, full of gold. When they came and told him he pretended not to be at all surprised, and said: “Oh, yes; it’s some money I put away there; it’s nothing; leave it alone.” But in the night he went down secretly and fetched it away,[14] and that’s how he became so rich; for his father was a money-changer, who had a table where he changed money in the open street, and my father knew him quite well.’
13
‘Then there’s the ——’ (another rich family). ‘They got their money by confiscation of another[15] family, generations ago. That’s why they’re so charitable. What they give away in charity to the poor is immense; but it is because they know how the money came into the family, and they want to make amends for their ancestors.’