And now the door was vehemently pushed open, and a stoutly-built man entered, with a bag of money under his arm, which he triumphantly deposited on the marble table, exclaiming, with the air of one doing a good action, "Here am I; and here is money!" Mr. Jordan rose immediately, and said, in a friendly voice, "Good-morning, Mr. Stephen; how goes the world in Wolfsburg?" "A dreadful hole!" groaned Mr. Braun. "Where?" inquired Fink. "Not such a bad place either," said Mr. Stephen; "but little business doing." "Sixty-five sacks of Cuba," returned the principal to a question of one of the clerks. Meanwhile, the door opened again, and this time admitted a man-servant and a Jew from Brody. The servant gave the merchant a note of invitation to a dinner-party--the Jew crept to the corner where Fink sat. "What brings you again, Schmeie Tinkeles?" coldly asked Fink; "I have already told you that we would have no dealings with you." "No dealings!" croaked the unlucky Tinkeles, in such execrable German that Anton had difficulty in understanding him. "Such wool as I bring has never been seen before in this country." "How much a hundred weight?" asked Fink, writing, without looking at the Jew. "What I have already said." "You are a fool," said Fink; "off with you!" "Alas!" screamed he of the caftan, "what language is that? 'Off with you!'--there's no dealing so." "What do you want for your wool? "41-2/3," said Tinkeles. "Get out!" suggested Fink. "Don't go on forever saying 'Get out!'" implored the Jew, in despair; "say what you will give." "If you ask such unreasonable prices, nothing at all," replied Fink, beginning another sheet. "Only say what you will give." "Come, then, if you speak like a rational man," answered Fink, looking at the Jew. "I _am_ rational," was the low reply; "what will you give?" "Thirty-nine," said Fink. At that Schmeie Tinkeles went distracted, shook his black greasy hair, and swore by all he held holy that he could not take it under 41, whereupon Fink signified that he should be put out by one of the servants if he made so much noise. The Jew, therefore, went off in high dudgeon; soon, however, putting his head in again, and asking, "Well, then, what will you give?"