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RICHES They are not blind, good friend, but Ignorance and Deceit, who now hold sway everywhere, darken their vision. Moreover, to avoid being wholly ugly, I always put on a very lovely mask, gay with tinscl and jewels, and an embroidered robe before I meet them; whereupon, thinking that they sce my beauty face to face, they fall in love with me and despair of life if they do not win me. If anyone’ should strip me and show me to them, without a doubt they would reproach themselves for being shortsighted to that extent and for falling in love with things hateful and ugly.
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HERMES Why is it, then, that even after they are in the very midst of riches and have put the mask on their own face, they are still deluded, and would sooner lose their head than the mask if anyone should try to take it away? Surely it is not likely that they do not know that your beauty is put on when they see all that is under it.
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RICHES There are many things that help me in this too, Hermes.
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HERMES What are they?
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RICHES When a man, on first encountering me, opens his doors and takes me in, Pride, Folly, Arrogance, Effeminacy, Insolence, Deceit, and myriads more, enter unobserved in my train. Once his soul is obsessed by all these, he admires what he should not admire and wants what he should shun; he worships me, the progenitor of all these ills that have come in, because I am attended by them, and he would endure anything in the world rather than put up with losing me.
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HERMES But how smooth and slippery you are, Riches, how hard to hold and how quick to get away! You offer people no secure grip at all, but make your escape through their fingers in some way or other, like an eel or a snake. Poverty, on the other hand, is sticky and easy to grip, and has no end of hooks growing out all over her body, so that when people come near her she lays hold of them at once and cannot be disengaged easily. But in the midst of our gossip we have forgotten something rather important.
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RICHES What is it?
