"Eh! you are a fine bird too! look at them! what are they to you. Do you value them like diamonds?"
"It is as I thought, when I told you that I knew you."
"Pardon me, my dear fellow, but you have quite Jewish inclinations. You ought to let me have them for nothing."
"Now then, listen, in order to show you how far you are mistaken in me, and that I am no selfish animal, I shall take nothing for my dead serfs. Buy my stallion of me, and I'll give them to you into the bargain."
"But, my dear fellow, what am I to do with a stallion?" said Tchichikoff, quite bewildered by such a proposal.
"What to do? But remember, my dear fellow, I paid ten thousand roubles for the animal, and I'll let you have him for only four thousand."
"But of what use could a stallion be to me? I do not keep a horse-breeding institution, like his most glorious Majesty our Emperor does."
"But, my dear fellow, you seem not to understand me. I'll only take three thousand roubles of you now, and as for the remaining thousand, you may pay me later at your own convenience."
"But I do not want your stallion, nor any one else's. Heaven be with the whole race!"
"Well, will you buy my hunter, the grey mare?"