In the midst of this I could hear a terrible commotion towards the far end of the street, and a great crowd of people thronging the gate, and such pushing and quarelling as made me think that there was a general riot afoot, until I asked my friend what was the matter.  “There is very valuable treasure in that tower,” said the Angel, “and the reason for this tumult is that they are about to choose a treasurer for the Princess, instead of the Pope, who has been driven from office.”  So we went to see the election.

The candidates for the post were the stewards, the money-lenders, the lawyers, and the merchants, and it was the wealthiest of these that was to have it (for the more thou hast, the more wilt thou have and seek for--an insatiate complaint pertaining to this street).  The stewards were rejected at the outset, lest they might impoverish the whole street and, just as they had erected their mansions upon their masters’ ruins, in the end dispossess the princess herself.  The contest then lay between the other three.  The merchants had more silk, the lawyers more mortgages on land, and the money-lenders more bills and bonds and fuller purses.  “Ho, they won’t agree this night,” said the Angel, “come away; the lawyers are richer than the merchants, the money-lenders than the lawyers, the stewards than the money-lenders, and Belial richer than all; for they and all that belongs to them are his.”  “Why does the princess keep these robbers about her?” “What more befitting, seeing that she herself is arch-robber?” I was amazed to hear him call the princess by such name, and the proudest gentry in the land arrant robbers.  “Why, pray my lord,” said I, “do you consider these great noblemen worse thieves than highwaymen?” “Thou art a simpleton—­think on that knave who roves the wide world over, sword in hand, and with his ravagers at his back, slaying and burning, and depriving the true possessors of their states, and afterwards expecting to be worshipped as conqueror; is he not worse than the petty thief who takes a purse on the highway?  What is a tailor who filches a piece of cloth compared to a squire who steals from the mountain-side half a parish?  Ought the latter not be called a worse robber than the former, who only takes a shred from him, while he deprives the poor of pasture for his beast, and consequently of the means of livelihood for himself, and those depending upon him?  What is the stealing a handful of flour in the mill compared with the storing up of a hundred bushels to rot, in order to obtain later on for one bushel the price of four?  What is a threadbare soldier who robs thee of thy clothes at the swords’ point when compared with the lawyer who despoils thee of thy whole estate with the stroke of a quill, and against whom thou canst claim no recompense or remedy?  What is a pickpocket who steals a five-pound in comparison to a dice-sharper who robs thee of a hundred pounds in the third part of a night?  And what the swindler that deceives thee in a worthless old hack compared with the apothecary who swindles thee of thy money and life too, for some effete, medicinal stuff?  And moreover, what are all these robbers compared with that great arch-robber who deprives them all of everything, yea, of their hearts and souls after the fair is over?”