Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/376

372 FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES. that there was no being quiet in the day-time, nor sleeping in the night. Ja. What a wretched wealth was here? Gi. Few were wealthier in this sort of cattle. Ja. Sure your women were lazy sluts. Gi. They were mewed up in an apartment by themselves, and seldom came among the men ; so that you have nothing of them but the name of women ; and the men are forced to go without those services which properly belong to that sex in other families. Ja. But how could Antronius away with all this nastiness ? Gi. Pshaw, he was used to it from his cradle, and minded nothing in the world but getting of money. He loved to be anywhere but at home, and traded in every- thing you can think of. You know that city is a great town of the greatest commerce and business, What is his name, the famous painter, who thought that day was lost wherein he did not employ his pencil ; and our Antronius looked upon himself undone if one single day passed over his head without some profit. And if such a disaster happened to him, he did not fail one way or other to make it up at home.

Ja. What did he do 1 Gi. Why, he had a cistern of water in the house, as most people in that city have, whence he used to draw so many buckets of water, and put into his hogsheads of wine. This was a most certain profit. Ja. I suppose the wine was something of the strongest then 1 Gi. Far from that, for it was as dead as ditch water; for he never bought any but what was decayed to his hand, that he might buy it at an easier rate. And that he might not lose a drop of this, he used to mix and jumble the grounds of at least ten years standing, and set them a fermenting, that it might pass for new wine upon the lees, and would not lose a drop of the dregs neither. Ja. If we may believe the physicians, such wine will certainly breed the stone. Gi. There were no doctors there, I will assure you ; and in the most healthful years two or three at least of the family died of that distemper ; but he never troubled his head about that, how many burials went out of the house. Ja. No ! Gi. He made a penny even of the dead. And there was no gain he was ashamed to take, though it was never so small. Ja. Under your favour, that was downright theft though. Gi. Your merchants term it turning an honest penny.

Ja. But what sort of liquor did Antronius drink all the while 1

Gi. Almost the very same nectar that I told you of. Ja. Did he find no harm by it Gi. He was as hard as a flint, he could have lived ipon chopped hay ; and, as I told you before, he had been used to fare hard from his infancy. And he looked upon this dashing and brewing to be a certain pi'ofit to him, Ja. How so, I beseech you 1 Gi. If you reckon his wife, his sons, his daughters, his son-in-law, his men-servants, and his maid-servants, he had about thirty-three mouths in the family to feed. Now the more he corrected his wine with water the less of it was drunk, and the longer it was drawing off; so then if you compute a large bucket of water thrown in every day it will amount to no small sum, let me tell you, at the year's end. Ja. A sordid fellow ! Gi. This was not all, he made the same advantage of his bread too. Ja. How could he do that? Gi. He bought musty wheat, such as nobody else would buy but himself. Now, in the first place, here was a pre- sent gain, because he bought it so much cheaper, and then he had an art to cure the mustiness. Ja. But, prithee, how did he do that 1