"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[2] to ruin himself--taking money in advance, buying dear, selling cheap, and cutting your corn while it is still grass. CLE. What would you have me do? It is to this that young men are reduced by the accursed avarice of their fathers; and people are astonished after that, that sons long for their death. LA FL. No one can deny that yours would excite against his meanness the most quiet of men. I have not, thank God, any inclination gallows-ward, and among my colleagues whom I see dabbling in various doubtful affairs, I know well enough how to keep myself out of hot water, and how to keep clear of all those things which savour ever so little of the ladder; but to tell you the truth, he almost gives me, by his ways of going on, the desire of robbing him, and I should think that in doing so I was doing a meritorious action. CLE. Give me that memorandum that I may have another look at it. SCENE II.--HARPAGON, MR. SIMON (CLÉANTE _and_ LA FLÈCHE _at the back of the stage_). SIM. Yes, Sir; it is a young man who is greatly in want of money; his affairs force him to find some at any cost, and he will submit to all your conditions. HAR. But are you sure, Mr. Simon, that there is no risk to run in this case? and do you know the name, the property, and the family of him for whom you speak? SIM. No; I cannot tell you anything for certain, as it was by mere chance that I was made acquainted with him; but he will tell you everything himself, and his servant has assured me that you will be quite satisfied when you know who he is. All I can tell you is that his family is said to be very wealthy, that he has already lost his mother, and that he will pledge you his word, if you insist upon it, that his father will die before eight months are passed.