"Then keep your money, so that you won't suffer any loss!" replied the Justice cold-bloodedly. "Twenty-six is my price, as I have already said, and not a farthing less! You've known me a good many years, Mr. Marx, and you ought to realize by this time that dickering and beating down don't work with me, because I never take back what I say. I ask for a thing what it is worth to me, and never overcharge. So an angel with a trumpet might come down from heaven, but he wouldn't get the bay mare for less than twenty-six!"
"But," exclaimed the horse-dealer, provoked, "business consists of demanding and offering, doesn't it? I'd overcharge my own brother! When there is no more overcharging in the world, business will come to an end."
"On the contrary," replied the Justice, "business will then take much less time, and for that very reason will be more profitable. And besides that, both parties always derive much benefit from a transaction involving no overcharge. It has always been my experience that, when an overcharge is made, one's nature gets hot, and it results in nobody's knowing exactly what he is doing or saying. The seller, in order to put an end to the argument, often lets his wares go for a lower price than that which he had quietly made up his mind to charge, and the buyer, on the other hand, just as often, in the eagerness and ardor of bidding, wastes his money. Where there is absolutely no talk of abatement, then both parties remain beautifully calm and safe from loss."
"Inasmuch as you talk so sensibly, you have, I presume, thought better of my proposal," broke in the receiver. "As I, have already said, the government wants to convert into cash all the corn due from the farms in this region. It alone suffers a loss from it, for corn is corn, whereas money is worth so much today and so much tomorrow. Meanwhile, you see, it is their wish to free themselves from the burden of storing up corn. Kindly do me the favor, then, to sign this new cash-contract, which I have brought with me for that purpose."
"By no means!" answered the Justice vehemently. "For many hundreds of years corn, and only corn, has been paid over from the Oberhof to the monastery, and the receiver's office will have to content itself with that, just as the monastery has done. Does cash grow in my fields? No! Corn grows in them! Where, then, are you going to get the cash?"
"You're not going to be cheated, you know!" cried the receiver.
"We must always stand by the old ways of doing things," said the Justice solemnly. "Those were good times when the tablets with the lists of imposts and taxes of the peasantry used to hang in the church. In those days everything was fixed, and there were never any disagreements, as there are nowadays all too often. Afterwards it was said that the tablets with the hens and eggs and bushels and pecks of grain. interfered with devotion, and they were done away with." With that he went into the house.
"There is a stubborn fellow for you!" cried the horse-dealer, when he could no longer see his business friend. He put his varnished hat back on his head again with an air of vexation. "If he once makes up his mind not to do something, the devil himself cannot bring him around. The worst of it is that the fellow rears the best horses in this region, and after all, if you get right down to it, lets them go cheap enough."
"An obstinate, headstrong sort of people it is that lives hereabouts," said the receiver. "I have just recently come from Saxony and I notice the contrast. There they all live together, and for that reason they have to be courteous and obliging and tractable toward one another. But here, each one lives on his own property, and has his own wood, his own field, his own pasture around him, as if there were nothing else in the world. For that reason they cling so tenaciously to all their old foolish ways and notions, which have everywhere else fallen into disuse. What a lot of trouble I've had already with the other peasants on account of this stupid change in the mode of taxation! But this fellow here is the worst of all!" "The reason for that, Mr. Receiver, is that he is so rich," remarked the horse-dealer. "It is a wonder to me that you have put it through with the other peasants around here without him, for he is their general, their attorney and everything; they all follow his example in every matter and he bows to no one. A year ago a prince passed through here; the way the old fellow took off his hat to him, really, it looked as if he wanted to say: 'You are one, I am another.' To expect to get twenty-six pistoles for the mare! But that is the unfortunate part of it, when a peasant acquires too much property. When you come out on the other side of that oak wood, you walk for half an hour by the clock through his fields! And everything arranged in first rate order all the way! The day before yesterday I drove my team through the rye and wheat, and may God punish me if anything more than the horses' heads showed up above the tops. I thought I should be drowned."
"Where did he get it all?" asked the receiver.