this fellow Soft five hundred gold-pieces? Don't you know that he doesn't get a thing beyond food and clothes?"
"Friend Deed," said the other, "I am constrained to give to the enterprising. The final consequence is your affair. So why blame me?"
When poor Soft heard this, he looked for his bag and found it empty. This plunged him into the depths of gloom, and he thought: "Oh, dear! What good is life to me if I lose my money? I will just hang myself from this banyan tree and say goodbye to life."
Having made up his mind, he wove a rope of spear-grass, adjusted it as a noose to his neck, climbed out a branch, fastened it, and was about to let himself drop, when one of the figures appeared in the sky and said: "Do not be so rash, Friend Soft; I am the person who takes your money, who does not allow you one cowrie beyond food and clothes. Now go home. But, that you may not have seen me without result, ask your heart's desire."
"In that case," said Soft, "give me plenty of money." "My good fellow," said the other, "what will you do with money which you cannot enjoy or give away? For you are to have no use of it beyond food and clothes."
But Soft replied: "Even if I get no use of it, still I want it. You know the proverb:
The man of capital,
Though ugly and base-born,
