"
Then when they were alone at the extremity of the passage, Abdalonim,
with one of the keys hanging at his girdle, opened a large quadrangular
chamber divided in the centre by pillars of cedar. Gold, silver, and
brass coins were arranged on tables or packed into niches, and rose
as high as the joists of the roof along the four walls. In the corners
there were huge baskets of hippopotamus skin supporting whole rows of
smaller bags; there were hillocks formed of heaps of bullion on the
pavement; and here and there a pile that was too high had given way and
looked like a ruined column. The large Carthaginian pieces, representing
Tanith with a horse beneath a palm-tree, mingled with those from the
colonies, which were marked with a bull, star, globe, or crescent. Then
there might be seen pieces of all values, dimensions, and ages arrayed
in unequal amounts--from the ancient coins of Assyria, slender as the
nail, to the ancient ones of Latium, thicker than the hand, with the
buttons of Egina, the tablets of Bactriana, and the short bars of
Lacedaemon; many were covered with rust, or had grown greasy, or, having
been taken in nets or from among the ruins of captured cities, were
green with the water or blackened by fire. The Suffet had speedily
calculated whether the sums present corresponded with the gains and
losses which had just been read to him; and he was going away when he
perceived three brass jars completely empty.
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