Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/375

THE RICH MISER. 371 Sy. That which burns in the middle of the water. He applies that who, being provoked by the injuries of ill men, nevertheless does not give over doing good to all that deserve it. Ph. What is that you mean ? Is beneficence sometimes water and sometimes fire 1 Sy. Why not ! when Christ by way of allegory is sometimes a sun, some- times a fire, sometimes a stone. I said so for the purpose; if you know anything better, make use of it, and do not follow my advice.   Ja. How comes it about that you are so lean and meagre ? You look as if you had lived upon dew with the grasshopper ; you seem to be nothing but a mere skeleton. Gi. In the regions below the ghosts feed upon leeks and mallows; but I have been these ten months where I could not come at so much as them. Ja. Where is that, prithee I What, have you been in the galleys? Gi. No, I have been at Synodium. Ja. What, starved to death almost in so plentiful a country ] Gi. It is true as I tell you. Ja. What was the occasion of it ? what, had you no money 1 Gi. I neither wanted money nor friends. Ja. What the mischief was the matter then 1 Gi. Why, you must know I boarded with Antronius. Ja. What, with that rich old cuff 1 ? Gi. Yes, with that sordid hunks. Ja. It is very strange, methinks. Gi. Not strange at all; for by this sordid way of living they that have little or nothing to begin the world with scrape together so much wealth. Ja. But how came you to take a fancy to live so many months with such a landlord ? Gi. There was a certain affair that obliged me to it, and I had a fancy so to do likewise. Ja. But, prithee, tell me after what manner he lives. Gi. I will tell you, since it is a pleasure to recount the hardships one has sustained. Ja. It will certainly be a pleasure to me to hear it. Gi. Providence so ordered it that the wind sat full north for three months together, only it did not blow from the same point above eight days together; but I cannot tell the reason of it. Ja. How then could it blow north for three months together 1 ? Gi. Why, upon the eighth day, as if by agreement, it shifted its station ; where, after it had continued some seven or eight hours, then it veered to the old point again. Ja. In such a place as that your callico body had need have a good fire to keep it warm. Gi. We had had fire enough if we had but had wood enough. But our landlord Antronius, to save charges, used to grub up old stumps of trees in the common, that nobody thoiight worth while to get but himself, and would get them by night. And of these, green as they were, our fire was commonly made, which used to smoke plentifully, but would not flame out ; so that though it did not warm us at all, yet we could not say there was no fire. One of these fires would last us a whole day, they burnt so deliberately.

Ja. This was a bad place for a man to pass the winter in. Gi. It was so ; but it was a great deal worse to pass a summer in. Ja. Why so ? Gi. Because there was such a multitude of fleas and bugs