end of the street, and a great crowd of people thronging the gate, and
such pushing and quarelling as made me think that there was a general
riot afoot, until I asked my friend what was the matter. "There is very
valuable treasure in that tower," said the Angel, "and the reason for
this tumult is that they are about to choose a treasurer for the
Princess, instead of the Pope, who has been driven from office." So we
went to see the election.

The candidates for the post were the stewards, the money-lenders, the
lawyers, and the merchants, and it was the wealthiest of these that was
to have it (for the more thou hast, the more wilt thou have and seek for-
-an insatiate complaint pertaining to this street). The stewards were
rejected at the outset, lest they might impoverish the whole street and,
just as they had erected their mansions upon their masters' ruins, in the
end dispossess the princess herself. The contest then lay between the
other three. The merchants had more silk, the lawyers more mortgages on
land, and the money-lenders more bills and bonds and fuller purses. "Ho,
they won't agree this night," said the Angel, "come away; the lawyers are
richer than the merchants, the money-lenders than the lawyers, the
stewards than the money-lenders, and Belial richer than all; for they and
all that belongs to them are his." "Why does the princess keep these
robbers about her?" "What more befitting, seeing that she herself is
arch-robber?" I was amazed to hear him call the princess by such name,
and the proudest gentry in the land arrant robbers. "Why, pray my lord,"
said I, "do you consider these great noblemen worse thieves than
highwaymen?" "Thou art a simpleton--think on that knave who roves the
wide world over, sword in hand, and with his ravagers at his back,
slaying and burning, and depriving the true possessors of their states,
and afterwards expecting to be worshipped as conqueror; is he not worse
than the petty thief who takes a purse on the highway? What is a tailor