The impervious and inscrutable customer would look at me for a long time in silence. Suddenly pushing me aside with an arm like a piece of wood, he would go into the shop next door, and my shopman, rubbing his large ears, grumbled angrily: "You have let him go! You're a nice salesman!" In the next shop could be heard a soft, sweet voice, pouring forth a speech which had the effect of a narcotic. "We don't sell sheepskins or boots, my friend, but the blessing of God, which is of more value than silver or gold; which, in fact, is priceless." "The devil!" whispered our shopman, full of envy and almost beside himself with rage. "A curse on the eyes of that muzhik! You must learn! You must learn!" I did honestly try to learn, for one ought to do well whatever one has to do. But I was not a success at enticing the customers in, nor as a salesman. These gruff men, so sparing of their words, those old women who looked like rats, always for some reason timid and abject, aroused my pity, and I wanted to tell them on the quiet the real value of the icons, and not ask for the extra two _greven_. They amazed me by their knowledge of books, and of the value of the painting on the icons. One day a gray-haired old man whom I had herded into the shop said to me shortly: "It is not true, my lad, that your image workshop is the best in Russia--the best is Rogoshin's in Moscow." In confusion I stood aside for him to pass, and he went to another shop, not even troubling to go next door. "Has he gone away?" asked the shopman spitefully. "You never told me about Rogoshin's workshop." He became abusive. "They come in here so quietly, and all the time they know all there is to know, curse them! They understand all about the business, the dogs!" Handsome, overfed, and selfish, he hated the peasants. When he was in a good humor, he would complain to me: "I am clever! I like cleanliness and scents, incense, and eau-de-Cologne, and though I set such a value on myself, I am obliged to bow and scrape to some peasant, to get five copecks' profit out of him for the mistress. Do you think it is fair? What is a peasant, after all? A bundle of foul wool, a winter louse, and yet----" And he fell into an indignant silence. I liked the peasants. There was something elusive about each one of them which reminded me of Yaakov. Sometimes there would climb into the shop a miserable-looking figure in a _chapan_, put on over a short, fur-coat. He would take off his shaggy cap, cross himself with two fingers, look into the corner where the lamp glimmered, yet try not to, lest his eyes rest on the unblessed icons. Then glancing around, without speaking for some time, he would manage at length to say: "Give me a psalter with a commentary." Tucking up the sleeves of his _chapan_, he would read the pages, as he turned them over with clumsy movement, biting his lips the while. "Haven't you any more ancient than this?" "An old one would cost a thousand rubles, as you know."