... 'Have gold, more gold and yet more gold and the rest will be given unto you, genius and talent, beauty and nobility, glory and pleasure, and even, by some incredible paradox, disinterest, generosity, charity!'
'Hold on, hold on!' Blanchet spluttered.
'and science, too, my good father, science, which opens all doors, all coffers, all safes...'
'I am dazzled by everything I see, but why, on top of everything, do you insist on deafening my ears with your extravagant words? Poverty is not a vice, for heaven's sake!'
'Poverty is the mother of all vices.'
'Prelat, my friend, now you are blaspheming!'
'If I locked you up in a cage with a lion, would you prefer the animal to be well fed or hungry?'[...]
'[...] Take a thousand good, well-fed burghers, all inclined to benevolence to their fellow men. Shut them up in a cave without food and drink. Make them hungry! They will be transformed soon enough. If you are very fortunate, you may get one saint whose spirit will rise above the horrible condition of his body and who will sacrifice himself [...]'
'In time of war, famine, and epidemics, do you imagine that such things are hard to find?'
'And, above all, one would think that you took pleasure in such a frightful truth.'
'No, father, I do not take pleasure in it. But, you see, we Florentines have discovered a remedy for that purulent canker - gold. Against mankind's moral wounds, the panacea is wealth. If good angel appeared on earth to cure all wounds of body and soul, do you know what he would do? He would be an alchemical angel and manufacture gold!'
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