"All of you eaten up with debt! All out at elbows! You, the Cardinal, and Orsini would swallow all Peru. Where am I to get all this money?"
"A squeeze well administered to the udders of the Republic would put all to rights. But you have no need even to do that. Rumour says, that what with gold in coin and in ingots, and in precious stones, you have hoarded better than ten millions of money.... Besides, the public revenue, after all expenses are paid, gives you more than three hundred thousand ducats."
"And who dares to call me to account as to the amount?"
"You had better hang the multiplication table. Then, again, you make a mine of money by your commerce in leather, precious stones, grain, and pepper."
"Losses upon all of them! I have made up my mind to give up commerce. Perhaps,—I have not quite made up my mind,—perhaps I may continue to trade in pepper. But no more leather!—no more grain! He who trades in grain dies on straw."
"Do as you think best. But will you give me the forty thousand ducats?"
"Good heaven! where can you get rid of so much money?"
"Give it to me, and be sure that in so doing you lay it out well. I employ it in making you friends. I spend it among the people in festivities, in banquets, in pleasure. The rising generation is thus habituated to expense and luxury. I enervate it to your hand; I degrade it; I emasculate its intellect; I destroy its dignity of mind and its strength of body. I prepare it to receive the seed; so that you may sow it with what best suits your purpose."
"In truth, your humour is of a strange turn! You shall have the forty thousand ducats. But you will sign me an obligation to repay them little by little from your Pisan property."