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?"

"Thirty-nine," said Fink, watching the excitement he thus raised much as
an anatomist might the galvanic convulsions of a frog. The words
"thirty-nine" occasioned a fresh explosion in the mind of the Jew; he
came forward, solemnly committed his soul to the deepest abyss, and
declared himself the most unworthy wretch alive if he took less than 41.
As he could not profit by Fink's repeated exhortations to quit, a
servant was called. His appearance was so far composing, that Mr.
Tinkeles now declared he could go alone, and would go alone; whereup