Chapter 03: Trading Cities 02

In this mercantile city, people plied their trade. Nor did this discourage visitors. I boarded the merchants' cogwheels at twelve, set the ropes, and worked my way through an endless cluster of commercial enterprises. Each company spoke its own tongue, its merchants and workers had their own professions and their own way of carrying on, of thronging into the centre of the streets. They dealt with each other in the usual manner of traders. Merchants spoke of money as if it were a thing of the flesh; tradesmen smiled and pressed themselves tightly to their employers and demanded more coin for each house they visited. The shopkeepers offered the visitors cloth or glass or ice, leather or currants or lard. Men and women kept their hands warm in firepots. When they met face to face, they lifted up their hats as if shaking hands, and if by chance there was time before they resumed their work, there was a wink, and then a kiss.

At sunset the city brightened. The part where the black, smouldering fire pits were still burning lay close to one another, a mob of homes separated by narrow alleys. Street-bridges made for people's feet and strings for their wagon-wheels. People tramped through the streets, which were alive with tradesmen of every sort. The streets were full of people, from little children and old women to young women and rich men. Merchants and workmen hurried along the sides of the street and carried small wagons loaded with every sort of thing, such as salt and oils and wool and tobacco.

Money had given them the ease to live as they liked, to sit wherever they liked and to have whatever they liked; the society had been good to them; so it was possible to think very clearly about money.