Nosdrieff, after returning to his guests offered to show them all and everything on his estate, and in his village; and, in little more than two hours he had positively shown them everything worth seeing, so that there remained nothing else to be looked at. First of all they went to examine his stables, where they saw two mares, the one a grey silver-coloured animal, the other a chesnut one, then a black stallion, not a showy looking horse at all, but for which Nosdrieff swore that he had paid ten thousand roubles.
"You could never have paid ten thousand roubles for that animal," his brother-in-law observed coolly. "It is not worth even a thousand."
"By Heaven, I gave ten thousand for him," said Nosdrieff.
"You may invoke Heaven as a witness as much as you like, I don't care," his fair-complexioned brother-in-law persisted.
"Very well then, let us have a wager about it," exclaimed Nosdrieff.
But his brother-in-law did not like to lay him a wager.
Nosdrieff then showed them some empty stalls, in which he used to keep excellent race-horses formerly. In the same stable they also saw a goat, who, according to a proverbial faith, was deemed indispensable in a stable near the horses, and it seemed that this goat was on excellent terms with his fellow-animals, for it walked about under their stomachs as if quite at home. After this, Nosdrieff led them away, showed them a young wolf, whom he kept tied to a pole.
"Here is a whelp," said he, "I feed him purposely with raw meat. I want to bring him up to become a perfect wild beast."
They then went to look at a pond, in which, according to Nosdrieff, there were such enormously large fish, that two men would have every difficulty in pulling out one of them.
In this, however, his brother seemed not inclined to contradict him.