“Surely,” replied the second, “there must be substantial reasons for keeping measures with people, to purchase their discretion at so high a price.”

“I have not better reasons than another,” said Cephisa: “and yet I do not eat my words. Twenty thousand crowns, is not too large a sum to buy tranquillity: for I will frankly own, that I have not more confidence in my Toy than in my mouth, and many silly things have slipt from me in my life. I hear every day so many incredible adventures unveiled, attested, detailed by Toys, that even retrenching three fourths, the remaining part is sufficient to destroy a reputation. If mine should prove but half so great a liar as all those, I should be ruined. Was it not enough then that our conduct was in the power of our Toys, without our reputation being dependent on their discourses?”