The Jew's face expressed some uneasiness: "What service? If it be such a service as one may render, why not render it?"
"No talking! Take me to Warsaw!"
"To Warsaw? How so, to Warsaw?" said Yankel, with eyebrows and shoulders elevated in amazement.
"No talking! Take me to Warsaw. Come what will, I must see him once more! I must say, be it but one word to him."
"One word to whom?"
"To him, to Ostap, to my son!"
"Does not my lord know, then, that"—
"I know it, I know all. They have set a price of two thousand ducats upon my head. The fools, they did not even know its worth! I'll give five thousand ducats to thee. Here thou hast two thousand on the spot," and Boolba produced from his leathern bag two thousand ducats. "The rest when I come back."
The Jew took at once a piece of linen and covered the ducats with it. "Fine coins, these! beautiful coins!" said he, turning a ducat in his fingers and trying it with his teeth. "Methinks the man from whom my lord took such fine ducats, did not live an hour more, but just leaped into the water and drowned himself, after having lost these magnificent ducats."
"I would not have asked thee—I might perhaps have found my way to Warsaw by myself; but the cursed Poles may chance to recognise and seize me; I have no turn for contrivances, and you, Jews, you seem to have been made for them. You could cheat the devil himself; you know all kinds of such tricks, and this is the reason why I came to thee. The more so, as I could do nothing in Warsaw by myself. Go at once, put the horse to thy cart, and take me."