have struck one of your friends or perhaps yourself. I tell
you this, not to affront you, but out of fairness, at the same instant I
come to ask you to do me a very great service."

The Jew lifted his arm, which was as dry and gnarled as an ancient
vine-stock:

"Fabio Mutinelli, the Father which is in Heaven shall judge us, one and
the other. What is the service you are come to ask of me?"

"Lend me five hundred ducats for a year."

"Men do not lend without security. Doubtless you have learned this from
your own people. What is the security you offer?"

"You must know, Eliezer, I have not a denier left, not one gold cup, not
one silver goblet. Neither have I a friend left. One and all, they have
refused to do me the service I ask of you. I have nothing in all the
world but my honour as a merchant and my faith as a Christian. I offer
you for security the holy Virgin Mary and her Divine Son."

At this reply, the Jew, bending down his head as a man does to ponder
and consider, stroked his long white beard for a while. Presently he
looked up and said:

"Fabio Mutinelli, take me to see this security you offer. For it is meet
the lender be put in presence of the pledge proposed for his
acceptance."

"You are within your rights," returned the Merchant, "rise therefore and
come."

So saying, he led Eliezer to the Chiesa dell' Orto, near the spot called
the _Field of the Moors_. Arrived there and pointing to the figure of
the Madonna, which stood above the High Altar, the brow wreathed with a
circlet of precious stones and the shoulders covered with a
gold-broidered mantle, holding in her arms the Child Jesus sumptuously
adorned like his mother, the Merchant said to the Jew:

"Yonder is my security."

Eliezer looked with a keen eye and a calculating air first at the
Christian Merchant, then at the Madonna and Child; then presently bowed
his head in assent and said he would accept the pledge offered. He
returned with Fabio to his own house, and there handed him the five
hundred ducats, well and truly weighed:

"The money is yours for a year. If at the end of that time, to the day,
you have not paid me back the sum with interest at the rate fixed by the
law of Venice and the custom of the Lombards, you can picture yourself,
Fabio Mutinelli, what I shall think of the Christian Merchant and his
security."

Fabio, without a moment's loss of time, bought ships and loaded up with
salt and other sorts of merchandise, wh