the scab, and not a cross in
your breeches to scare the devil that tempts you to make these wishes: no
more than those two mumpers, wishers after the custom of Paris; one of whom
only wished to have in good old gold as much as hath been spent, bought, and
sold in Paris, since its first foundations were laid, to this hour; all of
it valued at the price, sale, and rate of the dearest year in all that space
of time. Do you think the fellow was bashful? Had he eaten sour plums
unpeeled? Were his teeth on edge, I pray you? The other wished Our Lady's
Church brimful of steel needles, from the floor to the top of the roof, and
to have as many ducats as might be crammed into as many bags as might be
sewed with each and everyone of those needles, till they were all either
broke at the point or eye. This is to wish with a vengeance! What think
you of it? What did they get by't, in your opinion? Why at night both my
gentlemen had kibed heels, a tetter in the chin, a churchyard cough in the
lungs, a catarrh in the throat, a swingeing boil at the rump, and the devil
of one musty crust of a brown george the poor dogs had to scour their
grinders with. Wish therefore for mediocrity, and it shall be given unto
you, and over and above yet; that is to say, provided you bestir yourself
manfully, and do your best in the meantime.

Ay, but say you, God might as soon have given me seventy-eight thousand as
the thirteenth part of one half; for he is omnipotent, and a million of
gold is no more to him than one farthing. Oh, ho! pray tell me who taught
you to talk at this rate of the power and predestination of God, poor silly
people? Peace, tush, st, st, st! fall down before his sacred face and own
the nothingness of your nothing.

Upon this, O ye that labour under the affliction of the gout, I ground my
hopes; firmly believing, that if so it pleases the divine goodness, you
shall obtain health; since you wish and ask for nothing else, at least for
the present. Well, stay yet a little longer with half an ounce of
patience.

The Genoese do not use, like you, to be satisfied with wishing health
alone, when after they have all the livelong morning been in a brown study,
talked, pondered, ruminated, and resolved in the counting-houses of whom
and how they may squeeze the ready, and who by their craft must be hooked
in, wheedled, bubbled, sharped, overreached, and choused; they go to the
exchange, and greet one another with a Sanita