“Well, then, I will tell you plainly,” he said, recovering himself, “only please do not tell any one. I am thinking of marrying; but you must know that the bride’s father and mother are very ambitious people. It’s a nice affair, truly; I’m sorry I entered into it. They imperatively require the bridegroom to own not less than three hundred souls, and as I have only a hundred and fifty peasants, that’s not enough——”
“Come, you’re lying, lying!” shouted Nozdreff again.
“No, no!” said Tchitchikoff, “I haven’t lied even so much as that”; and, with his thumb, he pointed out the smallest joint on his little finger.
“I’ll stake my head that you are lying,” retorted Nozdreff.
“But this is an insult! Why do you declare like that that I am lying?”
“Come, now, I certainly know you; you are a great rascal—allow me to tell you so in a friendly way. If I were your superior officer, I would have you hanged on the first tree.”
Tchitchikoff took offence at this remark. Any expression that was in any wise coarse or contrary to decorum proved distasteful to him. In fact he did not even like to be treated with familiarity under any circumstances, unless it were by a very exalted personage indeed. So he was now thoroughly offended.
“I’d hang you, by heavens I would!” repeated Nozdreff. “I say this to you frankly, not for the purpose of insulting you, but simply as a friend.”
“There are limits to everything,” said Tchitchikoff with a show of dignity. “If you wish to make such speeches as those, take yourself off to some barracks.” And then he added, “If you will not give me your dead serfs, then sell them to me.”
“Sell them! Come, I know you; you are a scamp, and you won’t give much for them!”
“Eh! but you are a strange fellow too! Look here; do you prize those dead serfs very highly? Do you value them like diamonds?”
“Well, yes, I do.”
“As you please. What Jewish instincts you have, my dear fellow! You simply ought to give them to me.”
“Come, now, just to prove that I am not a niggard, I won’t take anything for them. But buy my stallion, and I will give them to you as a bonus.”
“But, pray, what do I want with your stallion?” said Tchitchikoff, who was really astounded by this proposition.
“What? Why, I paid ten thousand roubles for him, and I will sell him to you for four.”
“But of what use is a stallion to me? I don’t keep a stud.”
“But, listen; you don’t understand me. I will only take three thousand roubles from you now, and the other thousand you can pay later on.”
“But I have no use for the stallion, God be with him!”
“Come, then, buy my chestnut mare.”
“I don’t need the mare either.”
“I will only ask you two thousand roubles for the mare and the grey horse which you saw in my stable.”