to correspond. Item:--A brick furnace with two retorts and three
receivers, very useful to those who have any taste for distilling."

CLE. You will drive me crazy.

LA FL. Gently!

"Item:--A Bologna lute with all its strings, or nearly all. Item:--A
pigeon-hole table and a draught-board, and a game of mother goose,
restored from the Greeks, most useful to pass the time when one has
nothing to do. Item:--A lizard's skin, three feet and a half in
length, stuffed with hay, a pleasing curiosity to hang on the ceiling
of a room. The whole of the above-mentioned articles are really worth
more than four thousand five hundred francs, and are reduced to the
value of a thousand crowns through the considerateness of the lender."

CLE. Let the plague choke him with his considerateness, the wretch,
the cut-throat that he is! Did ever anyone hear of such usury? Is he
not satisfied with the outrageous interest he asks that he must force
me to take, instead of the three thousand francs, all the old rubbish
which he picks up. I shan't get two hundred crowns for all that, and
yet I must bring myself to yield to all his wishes; for he is in a
position to force me to accept everything, and he has me, the villain,
with a knife at my throat.

LA FL. I see you, Sir, if you'll forgive my saying so, on the high-road
followed by Panurge [Footnote: The real hero in Rabelais' 'Pantagruel.']
to ruin himself--taking money in advance, buying dear, selling cheap,
and cutting your corn while it is still grass.