What is "piastres"

Usage examples of "piastres".

As long as I stayed at Rome the nine piastres a month came in regularly, but after my departure he returned to Rome, went to another convent, and died there suddenly thirteen or fourteen years ago.

He objected, but I convinced him with a couple of piastres, and by agreeing to use the post horses and to spare his own animals.

I calculated that as two hundred piastres were assigned to each as a dowry in case of marriage, the founder must have calculated on two marriages a year at least, and it seemed probable that these sums were made away with by some scoundrel.

The following day Dantes presented Jacopo with an entirely new vessel, accompanying the gift by a donation of one hundred piastres, that he might provide himself with a suitable crew and other requisites for his outfit, upon condition that he would go at once to Marseilles for the purpose of inquiring after an old man named Louis Dantes, residing in the Allees de Meillan, and also a young woman called Mercedes, an inhabitant of the Catalan village.

I complimented him on the immense wealth he had inherited to enable him to live so splendidly, but he laughed and told me that he did not possess fifty piastres, that his father had left nothing but debts, and that he himself already owed three or four thousand crowns.

Five times during his profligate career imprisoned for abominable crimes, he only succeeded in procuring his liberation by the payment of two hundred thousand piastres, or about one million francs.

Monsignor Guerra had paid the thousand piastres, and Giacomo had given his consent.

Yet he had to pay a house-tax of five piastres, a war-tax of five piastres, a camel-tax of five piastres, a palm-tax of five piastres, a salt-tax of nine piastres, a poll-tax of thirty piastres, a land-tax of ninety piastres.

As soon as his engagement with the patron of The Young Amelia ended, he would hire a small vessel on his own account -- for in his several voyages he had amassed a hundred piastres -- and under some pretext land at the Island of Monte Cristo.

If the venture was successful the profit would be enormous, there would be a gain of fifty or sixty piastres each for the crew.

Jacopo, expressed great regrets that Dantes had not been an equal sharer with themselves in the profits, which amounted to no less a sum than fifty piastres each.

The curate related the incident to the Count of San-Felice, who sent for the little shepherd, made him read and write before him, ordered his attendant to let him eat with the domestics, and to give him two piastres a month.

Run to Torlonia, draw from him instantly four thousand piastres, and give them to the bearer.

There were in all six thousand piastres, but of these six thousand Albert had already expended three thousand.

Thus seven or eight hundred piastres were wanting to them both to make up the sum that Albert required.