scarcely known, a child from its birth is often declared to be in debt.
For its nourishment is drawn from its mother, and the wretched mother is
the wife of a retainer who is fed by his lord. To such a degree is this
tyranny carried! If any owe a penny, his doom is sealed; he becomes a
bondsman, and thus the estates of the nobles are full of men who work
during their whole lives for the profit of others. Thus, too, the woods
are filled with banditti, for those who find an opportunity never fail
to escape, notwithstanding the hunt that is invariably made for them,
and the cruel punishment that awaits recapture. And numbers, foreseeing
that they must become bondsmen, before they are proclaimed forfeit steal
away by night, and live as they may in the forests.

How, then, does any man remain free? Only by the favour of the nobles,
and only that he may amass wealth for them. The merchants, and those who
have license to trade by land or water, are all protected by some noble
house, to whom they pay heavily for permission to live in their own
houses. The principal tyrant is supported by the nobles, that they in
their turn may tyrannise over the merchants, and they again over all the
workmen of their shops and bazaars.

Over their own servants (for thus they call the slaves, that the word
itself may not be used), who work upon their estates, the nobles are
absolute masters, and may even hang them upon the nearest tree. And here
I cannot but remark how strange it is, first, that any man can remain a
slave rather than die; and secondly, how much stranger it is that any
other man, himself a slave, can be found to hunt down or to hang his
fellow; yet the tyrants never lack executioners. Their castles are
crowded with retainers who wreak their wills upon the defenceless. These
retainers do not wear the brazen bracelet; they are free. Are there,
then, no beggars? Yes, they sit at every corner, and about the gates of