Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/208

196 pressed for money, then he was ready out of sympathy to give … but really it was a trifle scarcely worth discussing.

'Why, how much would you give?' asked Plyushkin, and he 'went Jewish'; his hands quivered like quicksilver.

'I'd give you twenty-five kopecks the soul.'

'And how would you buy them—for ready money?'

'Yes, money down.'

'Only, my good sir, considering my great need, you might give me forty kopecks apiece.'

'My honoured friend,' said Tchitchikov, 'I should be glad to pay you not forty kopecks, but five hundred roubles each! I would pay it with pleasure, for I see a good, worthy old man suffering through his own kindness of heart.'

'Yes indeed, that's true! It's really the truth!' said Plyushkin, hanging his head and shaking it regretfully. 'It's all through kindness of heart.'

'There, you see I grasped your character at once. And so I should be glad to give five hundred roubles, but … I have not the means. I am ready to add five kopecks so that the souls would be thirty apiece.'

'Well, my good sir, as you will, but you might raise it two kopecks.'

'I will raise it another two kopecks, certainly. How many of them have you? I believe you said seventy.'

'No, altogether there are seventy-eight.'