Read "Clarissa Harlowe" by Samuel Richardson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Tuesday, May 2 Mercury, as the fabulist tells us, having the curiosity to know the estimation he stood in among mortals, descended in disguise, and in a statuary's shop cheapened a Jupiter, then a Juno, then one, then another, of the dii majores; and, at last, asked, What price that same statue of Mercury bore? O Sir, says the artist, buy one of the others, and I'll throw you in that for nothing.
How sheepish must the god of thieves look upon this rebuff to his vanity!