d plates thin enough and the edges were always too thick
to our great loss. Now the machine rolls them all out uniformly. It only
cost 10,000 ducats."

"Very cheap indeed!" cried the old man, who was wearing a ragged
sheepskin and yet considered ten thousand ducats a moderate price for a
rolling mill.

The Mask took up one of the little glistening plates.

"Do you know, my friend, the name of this?" said he.

"No."

"Its name is Zain. In order that you may not forget it I will wind it
round your arm." And as if it were merely hard paper he lightly bent the
gold plate round the girl's wrist and then pressed the ends of this
improvised bracelet together with his steel-like fingers. "Don't forget
that this is called Zain and that you got it from me."

The girl looked doubtfully at him as if she would have said: "Is it
lawful for you to give away everything here as if it were your own."

But the old man could not look on at this in silence. "Alas! alas!
Domnule, give not away uncoined gold. Rather squander coined gold in
heaps. The other is of itself a witness against us and thereby we shall
furnish a clue to our enemies."

"It is in a good place," replied Fatia Negra; "it is on Anicza's arm and
there it will keep silence."

Anicza replied to this apology with ten kisses. And she calculated
rightly. This necklace weighed exactly ten double ducats--but the kisses
also were double ones.

Then Fatia Negra led them to another machine which cut round gold
pieces out of the rolled out "Zain." He showed the girl how every
clipper, how every screw beneath the impulsion of the piston did its
proper share of the work, and how the whole process was set going by
steam power from without and could therefore be directed and controlled
by one man with another man to relieve him at intervals.

"Dumnezu!"[20] sighed old Onucz, "when I think that fifty years ago we
did all this with only our hammers and chisels! We sweated two whole
days over a piece of work which this marvel can do in an hour. And how
many hands we employed too!"

[Footnote 20: My master.]

Then they went to another machine. This was a small table whose steel
wheels notched the ducats before they passed beneath the stamping
machine. Perpetually moving elastic springs pushed the gold pieces
forward one after the other, turned them round and jerked them away. You
saw no other motive power but a large wheel revolving under a broad
strap; the strap disappeared