e greed of the shipping agent of Venice or
the inn-keeper of the Brenner Pass. These gentlemen insisted upon cash.
His Lordship therefore was obliged to take a small quantity of gold with
him upon his voyage. Where could he find this gold? He could borrow it
from the Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards, who had turned
professional money-lenders, who seated behind their exchange-table
(commonly known as "banco" or bank) were glad to let his Grace have a
few hundred gold pieces in exchange for a mortgage upon his estates,
that they might be repaid in case His Lordship should die at the hands
of the Turks.

That was dangerous business for the borrower. In the end, the Lombards
invariably owned the estates and the Knight became a bankrupt, who
hired himself out as a fighting man to a more powerful and more careful
neighbour.

His Grace could also go to that part of the town where the Jews were
forced to live. There he could borrow money at a rate of fifty or sixty
percent. interest. That, too, was bad business. But was there a way out?
Some of the people of the little city which surrounded the castle were
said to have money. They had known the young lord all his life. His
father and their fathers had been good friends. They would not be
unreasonable in their demands. Very well. His Lordship's clerk, a
monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note to the best known
merchants and asked for a small loan. The townspeople met in the
work-room of the jeweller who made chalices for the nearby churches and
discussed this demand. They could not well refuse. It would serve no
purpose to ask for "interest." In the first place, it was against the
religious principles of most people to take interest and in the second
place, it would never be paid except in agricultural products and of
these the people had enough and to spare.

"But," suggested the tailor who spent his days quietly sitting upon his
table and who was somewhat of a philosopher, "suppose that we ask some
favour in return for our money. We are all fond of fishing. But his
Lordship won't let us fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have
a hundred ducats and that he give us in return a written guarantee
allowing us to fish all we want in all of his rivers. Then he gets the
hundred which he needs, but we get the fish and it will be good business
all around."

The day his Lordship accepted this proposition (it seemed such an easy
way of getting a hund