Failure was not something the Devil was used to. He went into a pout for a week. This affected everything. The river flowed the wrong way again. The wind blew day and night and the Royal Eagle stayed in her nest. The village hens refused to lay eggs. Abbé Capdevielle got the worst case of indigestion he had ever experienced. Madame Labayle’s bread refused to rise for the first time in forty years and Gilles Moutel’s best boots were found in the pig’s pen. Everyone knew it was the work of the Devil. They stared down at the stones and did not dare whisper his name.

There is one thing even stronger in people than religion and churches, the Devil thought – Money! That precious commodity which men and women longed for, fought over, neglected each other to get, often killed to obtain. The desire for money gave everyone a desire for more of it. No one ever got enough. The poor wanted it. The rich wanted to be richer. The big stepped on the small. The world was made of money. Everyone knew that money was the root of all evil, but nobody cared. They just wanted more of it. “Money!” the Devil sang in a delighted voice: “Money! Oh! Money! Oh, Cash makes the world go round”!

He decided greed was what was needed in Banios. Greed could ruin anything and everything. It destroyed every virtue. It didn’t even need to be just money. It could be food or possessions or sex. But the best greed of all was for just plain, old-fashioned cash. No one ever got enough of it. So greed was what he would stir into his Banios broth. “Money! Money! Money!” he sang over and over. A sudden treasure was what was needed in Banios. He just knew it.