you going to get from some people on a note? Here I have about a hundred
thousand rubles' worth of 'em lying around, and with protests. You don't
do anything but add to the heap each year. If you want, I'll sell you the
whole pile for half a ruble in silver. You'll never catch the men who
signed 'em even with bloodhounds. Some have died off, some have run away;
there's not even a single man to put in the pen. Suppose you do send one
there, Lázar, that doesn't do you any good; some of 'em will hold on so
that you can't smoke 'em out. "I'm all right here," they say, "you go
hang!" Isn't that so, Lázar?

PODKHALYÚZIN. Just so, that's the way it happens.

BOLSHÓV. Always notes, notes! But what on earth is a note? Absolutely
nothing but paper, if I may say so. And if you discount it, they do it at
a rate that makes your belly ache, and you pay for it later with your own
property. [_After a brief silence_] It's better not to have dealings with
provincials: always on credit, always on credit; and if he ever does bring
the money, it's in slick small change--you look, and there's neither head
nor tail to the coins, and the denomination's rubbed off long ago. But do
as you please here! You'd better not show your goods to the tradesman of
this place; any one of 'em'll go into any warehouse and sniff and peck, and
peck, and then clear out. It'd be all right if there were no goods, but
what do you expect a man to trade in? I've got one apothecary shop, one dry
goods, the third a grocery. No use, none of them pays. You needn't even go
to the market; they cut the prices down worse than the devil knows what;
but if you sell a horse-collar, you have to throw in trimmings and earnest
money, and treat the fellows, and stand all sorts of losses through wrong
weights. That's the way it goes! Don't you realize that?

PODKHALYÚZIN. Seems I ought to realize it, sir.