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"Public money," I answered, and groaned again. "It means ruin for me," I added. "Well," said he, "I've lost my own every stiver about me." He began to hop about again, halted, and began to wag his forefinger at me slowly. "Come, come, what's the use? I'm sorry for you, but where's your heart?" I stared, not well knowing what to make of his manner.
Ippolito candidly confessed, as Ariosto himself tells us, that he not only did not care for poetry, but never gave his attendant one stiver in patronage of it, or for any thing whatsoever but going his journeys and doing as he was bidden.
Popular he was; but the students knew his failings, among which stood prominently that of a forgetful borrower. They would buy him drinks, clothes and food, if need be, but they would not lend him a stiver. And he could not borrow from Stuler, whose law was only to trust. Johann gambled, and wine always brought back the mad fever for play.
Inspired only by the love of glory, he asked for no remuneration for his services save thirteen per cent. of the booty, after half a million florins should have been paid into the public treasury. It was hardly probable that this would prove a large share of prize money, while considerable victories alone could entitle him to receive a stiver.
"There is not a stiver in the house." Gretel pouted. It was the only way she could express sympathy just then. Her tears fell one by one into the dough. "Did the meester say he MUST have these things, Mother?" asked Hans. "Yes, he did." "Well, Mother, don't cry, HE SHALL HAVE THEM. I shall bring meat and wine before night. Take the cover from my bed. I can sleep in the straw."
Proclamations and commissions followed hard upon each other, but it was not till April 1573, that the matter was definitely arranged. Before that day arrived, the commerce of the Netherlands had suffered, at the lowest computation, a dead loss of two million florins, not a stiver of which was ever reimbursed to the sufferers by the Spanish government.
"Take care, Lumpy," cried the boy, "I'm wery tender, like an over-young chicken. You'd better set me down before I comes in pieces." "Why, Stiver, you're the very man I was thinkin' of," said Lumpy, setting the boy on the edge of the pier, and sitting down beside him. Stiver looked proud, and felt six inches taller.
All the wonderful shops and not a stiver in her pockets!" "Aren't they the most careless lot, these professional people? They never prepare for emergencies, and are always left high and dry. Instead of putting their cash in banks, they buy diamonds, with the idea that they have always something convertible into cash at a moment's notice." "Usually at one-third of what the original price was."
Besides, it was all in the way of your profession, and happened a long time ago, ha, ha, ha!" "Pshaw! pshaw! don't let us jest; I am not against making a handsome compliment but it's your affair as well as mine." "What do you talk of my affair? is it not you that keep the bouncer's whole estate from him? Dirk Hatteraick never touched a stiver of his rents."
The "seven stiver people", spies of government, who for that paltry daily stipend were employed to listen for treason in every tavern, in every huckster's booth, in every alley of every city, were now quite unable to report all the curses which were hourly heard uttered against the tyranny of the Viceroy. Evidently, his power was declining.
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