Suppose me that you might be very
sure that the Turk would break no promise with you. Are you then
sure enough to retain all your substance still?
VINCENT: Yea, then.
ANTHONY: What if a man should ask you how long?
VINCENT: How long? As long as I live.
ANTHONY: Well, let it be so, then. But yet, as far as I can see,
though the great Turk favour you never so much and let you keep
your goods as long as ever you live, yet if it hap that you be this
day fifty years old, all the favour he can show you cannot make you
one day younger tomorrow. But every day shall you wax older than
the day before, and then within a while must you, for all his
favour, lose all.
VINCENT: Well, a man would be glad, for all that, to be sure not
to lack while he liveth.
ANTHONY: Well, then, if the great Turk give you your goods, can
there then in all your life none other take them from you again?
VINCENT: Verily, I suppose not.
ANTHONY: May he not lose this country again unto Christian men,
and you, with the taking of this way, fall in the same peril then
that you would now eschew?
VINCENT: Forsooth, I think that if he get it once, he will never
lose it after again in our days.
ANTHONY: Yes, by God's grace. But yet if he lose it after our day,
there goeth your children's inheritance away again! But be it now
that he could never lose it; could none take your substance from
you then?
VINCENT: No, in good faith, none.
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