y on foot, until I demanded of my friend what was
the matter. "There is an exceeding great treasure in that tower," said
the angel, "and all that concourse is for the purpose of choosing a
treasurer to the princess, in lieu of the Pope, who has been turned out
of that office." So we went to see the election.

The men who were competing for the office were the _Stewards_, the
_Usurers_, the _Lawyers_, and the _Merchants_, and the richest of the
whole was to obtain it, because the more you have the more you shall
crave, is the epidemic curse of the street. The Stewards were rejected
at the first offer, lest they should impoverish the whole street, and, as
they had raised their palaces on the ruins of their masters, lest they
should in the end turn the princess out of her possession; then the
dispute arose between the three others; the Merchants had the most silks,
the Lawyers most mortgages on lands, and the Usurers the greatest number
of full bags, and bills and bonds. "Ha! they will not agree to night,"
said the angel, "so come away; the Lawyers are richer than the Merchants,
the Usurers are richer than the Lawyers, and the Stewards than the
Usurers, and Belial than the whole, for he owns them all, and their
property too."

"For what reason is the princess keeping these thieves about her?" I
demanded. "What can be more proper," said he, "when she herself is the
arrantest of thieves." I was astonished to hear him call the princess
thus, and the greatest potentates thieves of the first water. "Pray, my
lord," said I, "how can you call those illustrious people greater thieves
than robbers on the highway?" "You are but a dupe," said he; "is not the
villain who goes over the world with his sword in his hand and his
plunderers behind him, burning and slaying, wresting kingdoms from their
right owners, and looking forward to be adored as a conqueror, worse than
the rogue who takes a purse upon the highway? What is the tailor who
cabbages a piece of cloth, to the great man who takes a piece out of the
parish common? Ought not the latter to be called a thief of the first
water, or ten times more a rogue than the other?--the tailor merely takes
snips of cloth from his customer, whilst the other takes from the poor
man the sustenance of his beast, and by so doing the sustenance of
himself and his little ones--what is taking a handful of flour at the
mill, to keeping a hundred sacksfull to putrify, in order to obtain
aft