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He had accumulated a goodly sum by begging, it is true, but, strangely enough, he did not think of purchasing salvation for himself in order to meet his child again in heaven, instead of amid the flames of purgatory. Though he had become as rich as the Fuggers, paradise, he knew, would still be closed to him. He was not fit for it. He hated everybody who was rich and respectable.

Thus the man of truth, faith, and his word had no idea of selling himself cheap, but manifested as much commercial genius as the Fuggers themselves could have displayed, had they been employed as brokers in these mercantile transactions.

The financial resources of the powers were small: their regular revenues soon failed; and they had to fly for loans to great banking houses, such as that of the Fuggers at Augsburgh, so that the money power became the arbiter even of Imperial elections. The country on which the armies lived was soon eaten up by their rapine.

The next morning Master Jamnitzer called the valuable star his own, and pledged himself to keep the matter secret, and to obtain from the Fuggers a bill of exchange upon Paris for ten thousand lire. The honest man sent her through the Haller banking house a thousand ducats, that he might not be open to the reproach of having defrauded her.

Moreover, whatever the theoretical worth of indulgences, the motive of their sale was notoriously the greed of unscrupulous ecclesiastics. The 'holy trade' as it was called had become so thoroughly commercialized by 1500 that a banking house, the Fuggers of Augsburg, were the direct agents of the Curia in Germany.

Skill and knowledge and capital these three points mark out a social triangle on which the scutcheon of power is blazoned; our modern aristocracy must take its stand on these. A fine theorem is as good as a great name. The Rothschilds, the Fuggers of the nineteenth century, are princes de facto.

She was as agile as a squirrel. Her pretty little face, with its sparkling blue eyes, attracted the men as bacon draws mice. Then, pleased to have listeners, she related how the girl had lured florins and zecchins from the purse of many a wealthy ecclesiastic. She might have been as rich as the Fuggers if she hadn't met with the accident and had understood how to keep what she earned.

They entreated that the bills drawn in Philip's name upon Lombardy bankers, and discounted at a heavy rate of interest, by the Fuggers of Antwerp, might be duly provided for at maturity.

Thus the man of truth, faith, and his word had no idea of selling himself cheap, but manifested as much commercial genius as the Fuggers themselves could have displayed, had they been employed as brokers in these mercantile transactions.

By a secret agreement, of which Luther was, of course, entirely ignorant, one-half of the proceeds was to be paid to the Fuggers of Ausburg on account of money advanced to the Archbishop for the payment of the fees to Rome, and of the sums demanded in consideration of a dispensation allowing him to occupy three sees at the same time; the other half of the proceeds was to go to the papal treasury to be applied to the building of the new church.