"How many inhabitants are there in the village?"
"Rather less than five hundred."
"And how much do they pay the priest?"
They began to reckon out how much wood they had to give, how much corn, and how much wine. The young priest looked more and more serious as they went on.
"That is very little," he said sadly. "And what are the fees?"
"Oh, they are large enough," answered Klincsok; "at a funeral it depends on the dead person, at a wedding it depends on the people to be married; but they are pretty generous on that occasion as a rule; and at a christening one florin is paid. I'm sure that's enough, isn't it?"
"And how many weddings are there in a year?"
"Oh, that depends on the potato harvest. Plenty of potatoes, plenty of weddings. The harvest decides it; but as a rule there are at least four or five."
"That is not many. And how many deaths occur?"
"That depends on the quality of the potato harvest. If the potatoes are bad, there are many deaths, if they are good, there are less deaths, for we are not such fools as to die then. Of course now and then a falling tree in the woods strikes one or the other dead; or an accident happens to a cart, and the driver is killed. You may reckon a year with eight deaths a good one as far as you are concerned."