t happened that
a distinguished lord was travelling towards the same country, it was
expedient to bribe him, for he and his suite, their waggons and horses,
were never examined at the city gates. Sometimes the agent disguised
himself as a distinguished lord or soldier, and caused the burden
to be conveyed by the trooper's horses or his servants. Sometimes the
mint-master was obliged to travel to the frontier to meet the agent,
under the pretext of paying a visit to some friend. Then the costly
goods were carried far from the dwellings of men, across lonely heaths,
or through the clearings of a wood, from one hand to another, on a
merchant's parole.

Meanwhile the petty Jewish dealer carried at night, along byways over
the frontier, his wallet full of old groschen, in the twofold fear of
robbers and of the guardians of the law. The wallet, the broad-brimmed
hat, and the yellow cloth border to the coat, the mark of a Jew of the
Empire, was frequently seen at the mint. There existed between the
dealer and the mint-master a confidential business connection,
certainly not without a mental reservation; for it occasionally
happened to the Jew that false thalers were found in one of the
hundred marks which he delivered in thalers, or that the wallet
together with the coin had become moist during the journey, which added
some half-ounces to their weight, or that fine white sand became
mingled with the granulated silver, and was weighed with it. For this
the mint-master indemnified himself, by hanging the scales so that one
side of the beam was shorter than the other, by causing the scales to
spring up and descend slowly, notwithstanding the perpendicular
position of the balance, in order to make the wares some half-ounces
lighter, or by falsifying the weights altogether. What the masters did
not do, the apprentices of the mint ventured upon. However cautious the
purveyor might be during the smelting assay, they understood how to mix
copper dust with the silver already weighed, in order to make the assay
worse than it really was. Such was the state of the traffic even at
those mints where there was still some respect for the law.

Besides the licensed coiners, there were others in most of the ten
Circles, of easier conscience and bolder practice; not exactly false
coiners in our sense of the term, although this was carried on with
great recklessness; but nobles and corporations who had the right of
coining, and prized it highly