heir 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
towards those that carried much gold on their persons, so that they
called them good and beautiful; it also caused them to see darkness and
dullness in the faces of those who carried none. "This," thought the
prince, "is very strange"; but not being able to explain it, he went
still further, and there he saw more people. Each of these had adorned
himself with a broad golden girdle, and was sitting in the shade, while
other men waited on them.

"What ails these people?" he inquired of one who was looking on, for he
observed a peculiar air of weariness and dullness in their faces. He was
answered that the girdles were very tight and heavy, and being bound
over the regions of the heart, were supposed to impede its action, and
prevent it from beating high, and also to chill the wearer, as being of
opaque material, the warm sunshine of the earth could not get through to
warm him.

"Why, then, do they not break them asunder," exclaimed the prince, "and
fling them away?"

"Break them asunder!" cried the man; "why what a madman you must be;
they are made of the purest gold!"

"Forgive my ignorance," replied the prince; "I am a stranger."

So he walked on, for feelings of delicacy prevented him from gazing any
longer at the men with the golden girdles; but as he went he pondered on
the misery he had seen, and thought to himself that this golden sand did
more mischief than all the poisons of the apothecary; for it dazzled the
eyes of some, it strained the hearts of others, it bowed down the heads
of many to the earth with its weight; it was a sore labor to gather it,
and when it was gathered, the robber might carry it away; it would be a
good thing, he thought, if there were none of it.

After this he came to a place where were sitting some aged widows and
some orphan children of the gold-diggers, wh