If you might come afterward and complain your grief unto his own person yourself, you should find him as shamefast as a friend of mine, a merchant, once found the Sultan of Syria. Being certain years about his merchandise in that country, he gave to the Sultan a great sum of money for a certain office for him there for the while. But he had scantly granted him this and put it in his hand when, ere ever it was worth aught to him, the Sultan suddenly sold it to another of his own sect, and put our Hungarian out. Then came he to him and humbly put him in remembrance of his grant, spoken with his own mouth and signed with his own hand. Thereunto the Sultan answered him, with a grim countenance, "I will have thee know, good-for-nothing, that neither my mouth nor mine hand shall be master over me, to bind all my body at their pleasure. But I will be lord and master over them both, that whatsoever the one say and the other write, I will be at mine own liberty to do what I like myself, and ask them both no leave. And therefore, go get thee hence out of my countries, knave!" Think you now, my lord, that Sultan and this Turk, being both of one false sect, you may not find them both alike false of their promise? VINCENT: That must I needs jeopard, for other surety can there none be had. ANTHONY: An unwise jeoparding, to put your soul in peril of damnation for the keeping of your bodily pleasures, and yet without surety to jeopard them too! But yet go a little further, lo. Suppose me that you might be very sure that the Turk would break no promise with you. Are you then sure enough to retain all your substance still? VINCENT: Yea, then. ANTHONY: What if a man should ask you how long? VINCENT: How long? As long as I live. ANTHONY: Well, let it be so, then. But yet, as far as I can see, though the great Turk favour you never so much and let you keep your goods as long as ever you live, yet if it hap that you be this day fifty years old, all the favour he can show you cannot make you one day younger tomorrow. But every day shall you wax older than the day before, and then within a while must you, for all his favour, lose all. VINCENT: Well, a man would be glad, for all that, to be sure not to lack while he liveth. ANTHONY: Well, then, if the great Turk give you your goods, can there then in all your life none other take them from you again? VINCENT: Verily, I suppose not. ANTHONY: May he not lose this country again unto Christian men, and you, with the taking of this way, fall in the same peril then that you would now eschew? VINCENT: Forsooth, I think that if he get it once, he will never lose it after again in our days. ANTHONY: Yes, by God's grace. But yet if he lose it after our day, there goeth your children's inheritance away again! But be it now that he could never lose it; could none take your substance from you then? VINCENT: No, in good faith, none. ANTHONY: No, none at all? Not God?