Letter 88

88. Without address, to a collector of money.

The difficulty of gathering in the commercial gold your honour has come to understand better than anyone; and of our poverty we have no such witness as you, who out of your great loving-kindness have both sympathized with us and borne with us, as far as you could, up to the present, nowhere letting the gentleness of your settled character be moved by the disturbance of those set over you from above. Since, then, there remains to us out of the whole assessment only a little gold still, and this must be gathered from the contribution to which we have urged the whole city, we beg your gentleness to extend our term a little, so that those outside the city, too, may be reminded; for the greater part of those in office are in the country, as you yourself are not unaware. If, then, it is possible for so many pounds to be sent off — for that is what remains to us — we beg that this be done, and the rest will be dispatched afterward. But if there is every necessity that it all be conveyed to the treasury at once, then, as we asked from the beginning, let our term be made wider for us.