Il banchiere errante - Text fragments

(…)  Banchiere Errante:

(...) Wandering banker:

That cousin of mine, my Rothschild cousin, he'd really achieved the mystery of accumulating basic capital from nothing, that's how it was, from nothing, because that's how capital is born, from nothing. If you want to obtain power, you need arms, a crowd you need space.. But to obtain money, all you need is an idea, a spark...or just a coincidence. It was fascinating to hear him tell about the origin of his fortune, sitting after dinner, sipping a glass of port, with his high-ranking guests. Invariably, the story began like this: "I was poor, very poor, so poor that, one day, my hunger was so great that I stole an apple from a fruit-vendor's cart. I was dizzy from hunger, but the guilt I felt for having stolen the apple prevented me from eating it. I kept turning it over in my hands, over and over, I'd put it in my pocket and take it out again, but I couldn't make up my mind to eat it. Then I realized that all that handling had made the apple as shiny as could be, beautiful. I traded it for two apples from a street vendor, which I then polished till they became as red as the sunset.Then I traded the two for four, and then four for eight, sixteen apples. In the end I had an apple cart of my own. My apples were so beautiful that even the mayor of the city was captivated by them and awarded me the title of Cavalier". Every evening, there would always be one guest who would say impatiently: "Come on, Mr. Rothschild, do you expect us to believe that your inmense fortune was born simply from a stolen apple!". "Wait a minute!", my cousin would say in a firm voice, "the story isn't over yet. Well, I polished and polished my apples when one day...my uncle died and I inherited two million dollars!"

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