escape me, I find myself on a sudden so far away from it that I
am utterly amazed. It is just the same with the quadrature of the
circle. I have been within such a hair's breadth of it, that I cannot
conceive how it is that I have not got it in my pocket. Thus I suffer a
torment like that of Tantalus, who starves with fruits all round him,
and burns with thirst with water at his lip. At one moment I seem to
grasp the truth, at another it is far away from me; and, like another
Sisyphus, I begin again to climb the hill which I have just rolled down,
along with all the mass of my labours."

The projector, who had hitherto kept silence, now struck in. "Here we
are," he said, "four complainants, brought together by poverty under the
roof of this hospital. To the devil with such callings and employments,
as give neither pleasure nor bread to those who exercise them! I,
gentlemen, am a projector, and have at various times offered sundry
valuable projects to his majesty, all to his advantage, and without
prejudice to the realm; and I have now a memorial in which I supplicate
his majesty to appoint a person to whom I may communicate a new project
of mine, which will be the means of entirely liquidating all his debts.
But from the fate which all my other memorials have had, I foresee that
this one also will be thrown into the dust-hole. Lest, however, your
worships should think me crack-brained, I will explain my project to
you, though this be in some degree a publication of my secret.

"I propose that all his majesty's vassals, from the age of fourteen to
sixty, be bound once a month, on a certain appointed day, to fast on
bread and water; and that the whole expenditure, which would otherwise
be made on that day for food, including fruit, meat, fish, wine, eggs,
and vegetables, be turned into money, and the amount paid to his
majesty, without defrauding him of a doit, as each shall declare on
oath. By this means, in the course of twenty years the king will be
freed from all debts and incumbrances. The calculation is easily made.
There are in Spain more than three millions of persons of the specified
age, exclusive of invalids, old, and young, and there is not one of
these but spends at least a real and a half daily; however, I am willing
to put it at a real only, and less it cannot be, even were they to eat
nothing but leeks. Now does it not strike your worships that it would be
no bad thing to realise every month three million