"When did you bring the new machinery here?"
"A long time ago; we have coined a great deal of money since it first
came. The work is all the quicker and we need fewer men to work it."
They went into the next room through a low door, all three of them
having to bow their heads as they entered, and there they saw a gigantic
machine at work between whose revolving cylinders depended the long gold
ingots which were gradually reduced to the proper thinness for making
gold coins.
"Don't you see, Onucz? Hitherto we wasted too much time and labour in
cutting the gold plates thin enough and the edges were always too thick
to our great loss. Now the machine rolls them all out uniformly. It only
cost 10,000 ducats."
"Very cheap indeed!" cried the old man, who was wearing a ragged
sheepskin and yet considered ten thousand ducats a moderate price for a
rolling mill.
The Mask took up one of the little glistening plates.
"Do you know, my friend, the name of this?" said he.
"No."
"Its name is Zain. In order that you may not forget it I will wind it
round your arm." And as if it were merely hard paper he lightly bent the
gold plate round the girl's wrist and then pressed the ends of this
improvised bracelet together with his steel-like fingers. "Don't forget
that this is called Zain and that you got it from me."
The girl looked doubtfully at him as if she would have said: "Is it
lawful for you to give away everything here as if it were your own.
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