The Egibis’ office, like all the other shops, was a room open to all comers, nearly level with the way, without door or window, but made cool by the green awning stretched across the street in front, and the shadow cast by the high houses opposite. In the office many young clerks were on their stools, each busily writing on the frames of damp clay in their laps with a wedge-headed stylus. Itti-Marduk, present head of this the greatest banking-house of Babylon, was a plainly dressed, quiet-speaking man; and only the great rubies in his earrings and the rare Arabian pomade on his hair told that he could hold up his head before any lord of Chaldea saving Belshazzar himself. At this moment he was entertaining no less a client than Avil-Marduk, the chief priest, who came in company with his boon companion, the priest Neriglissor, as did all the city at one or another time, to ask an advance from the omnipotent broker. As for Itti, he was angling his fish after his manner, keeping up a constant stream of polite small talk, sending out a lad to bring perfumed water to bathe his noble guests’ feet, and yet making it plain all the while that current rates of interest were exceedingly heavy. “Alas!” the worthy banker was bewailing, “that I must speak of shekels and manehs before friends, but what with heavy remittances I must send to agents in Erech, with the farmers all calling for funds to pay their help for the coming season, and a heavy loan to be placed by his Majesty to complete the fortifications of Borsippa, I have been put to straits to raise so much as a talent; and were you any other than yourself, my dear high priest, I fear I could do nothing for you.” “Yet I swear by Samas,” protested the pontiff, with a wry face at the loan-contract before him, “you have enough in your caskets to build us poor priests of Bel a new _ziggurat_.” “A new _ziggurat_!” protested the banker; “am I like Ea, able to see all hidden riches? I declare to you that what with the rumour that the tribes in the southern marshes around Teredon are restless, money becomes as scarce as snow in midsummer. Ramman forbid that anything come of the report! It will wither all credit!” So at last, with many protests from Avil, the contract was signed, and stored away in a stout earthen jar, in the strong room of the cellar, where lay countless jugs of account books. And Itti, to make his guest forget that he had just bargained to pay “twelve shekels on the maneh,”[2] inquired genially if the recent taking of the omens had chanced to be fortunate. He was met by blank faces both from Avil and his chariot comrade, the toothless old “anointer of Bel,” Neriglissor. “The omens are direful,” began the latter, in a horrified whisper. “Hush!” admonished the chief priest, “a state secret. To breathe it on the streets would send corn to a famine price.” The banker had pricked up his ears. “I am not curious in matters of state; Marduk forbid! Yet if in confidence I were told anything—”