ortly, when the city was well-nigh taken, he saw some men secretly
giving gold among the soldiers, so much of it that they threw down their
arms to pick it up, and said that the walls were so strong that they
could not throw them down. "O powerful gold!" thought the prince; "thou
art stronger than the city walls!"

After that it seemed to him that he was walking about in a desert
country, and in his dream he thought, "Now I know what labor is, for I
have seen it, and its benefits; and I know what liberty is, for I have
tasted it; I can wander where I will, and no man questions me; but gold
is more strange to me than ever, for I have seen it buy both liberty and
labor." Shortly after this he saw a great crowd digging upon a barren
hill, and when he drew near he understood that he was to see the place
whence the gold came.

He came up and stood a long time watching the people as they toiled
ready to faint in the sun, so great was the labor of digging up the
gold.

He saw some who had much and could not trust any one to help them to
carry it, binding it in bundles over their shoulders, and bending and
groaning under its weight; he saw others hide it in the ground, and
watch the place clothed in rags, that none might suspect that they were
rich; but some, on the contrary, who had dug up an unusual quantity, he
saw dancing and singing, and vaunting their success, till robbers
waylaid them when they slept, and rifled their bundles and carried their
golden sand away.

"All these men are mad," thought the prince, "and this pernicious gold
has made them so."

After this, as he wandered here and there, he saw groups of people
smelting the gold under the shadow of the trees, and he observed that a
dancing, quivering vapor rose up from it which dazzled their eyes, and
distorted everything that they looked at; arraying it also in different
colors from the true one. He observed that this vapor from the gold
caused all things to rock and reel before the eyes of those who looked
through it, and also, by some strange affinity, it drew their hearts
toward those who carried much gold on their persons, so that they called
them good and beautiful; it also caused them to see darkness and dulness
in the faces of those who had carried none. "This," thought the prince,
"is very strange;" but not being able to explain it, he went still
farther, and there he saw more people. Each of these had adorned himself
with a broad golden girdle, and