Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/127

Rh business. But the prettiest and most curious part of the whole story is their equity even to him, after he had given them all this trouble. They entirely recognize the need he is under of getting meat, somehow, for the mouths of these five hundred riders of his; also they hold him still their friend, though an unmanageable one; and admit with praise what of more or less patriotic and Guelphic principle may be at the root of his disobedience. So when he claims twelve thousand lire,—roughly, some two thousand pounds of money at present value,—from the Guelphs of Arezzo for his service, and the Guelphs, having got no good of it, owing to this Florentine interference, object to paying him, the Florentines themselves lend them the money,—and are never paid a farthing of it back.

127. There is a beautiful "investment of capital" for your modern merchant to study! No interest thought of, and little hope of ever getting back the principal. And yet you will find that there were no mercantile "panics" in Florence in those days, nor failing bankers,