time. His voice was as gentle as that of a bridegroom before marriage.
Although the clergy, the military, and others gave him no reputation
for knowledge, he knew well his mother's Latin, and spoke it correctly
without waiting to be asked. Latterly the Parisians had taught him to
walk uprightly, not to beat the bush for others, to measure his
passions by the rule of his revenues, not to let them take his leather
to make other's shoes, to trust no one farther then he could see them,
never to say what he did, and always to do what he said; never to
spill anything but water; to have a better memory than flies usually
have; to keep his hands to himself, to do the same with his purse; to
avoid a crowd at the corner of a street, and sell his jewels for more
than they cost him; all things, the sage observance of which gave him
as much wisdom as he had need of to do business comfortably and
pleasantly. And so he did, without troubling anyone else. And watching
this good little man unobserved, many said,

"By my faith, I should like to be this jeweller, even were I obliged
to splash myself up to the eyes with the mud of Paris during a hundred
years for it."

They might just as well have wished to be king of France, seeing that
the silversmith had great powerful nervous arms, so wonderfully strong
that when he closed his fist the cleverest trick of the roughest
fellow could not open it; from which you may be sure that whatever he
got hold of he stuck to. More than this, he had teeth fit to masticate
iron, a stomach to dissolve it, a duodenum to digest it, a sphincter
to let it out again without tearing, and shoulders that would bear a
universe upon them, like that pagan gentleman to whom the job was
confided, and whom the timely arrival of Jesus Christ discharged from
the duty. He was, in fact, a man made with one stroke, and they are