“There is a stubborn fellow for you!” cried the horse-dealer, when he could no longer see his business friend.  He put his varnished hat back on his head again with an air of vexation.  “If he once makes up his mind not to do something, the devil himself cannot bring him around.  The worst of it is that the fellow rears the best horses in this region, and after all, if you get right down to it, lets them go cheap enough.”

“An obstinate, headstrong sort of people it is that lives hereabouts,” said the receiver.  “I have just recently come from Saxony and I notice the contrast.  There they all live together, and for that reason they have to be courteous and obliging and tractable toward one another.  But here, each one lives on his own property, and has his own wood, his own field, his own pasture around him, as if there were nothing else in the world.  For that reason they cling so tenaciously to all their old foolish ways and notions, which have everywhere else fallen into disuse.  What a lot of trouble I’ve had already with the other peasants on account of this stupid change in the mode of taxation!  But this fellow here is the worst of all!” “The reason for that, Mr. Receiver, is that he is so rich,” remarked the horse-dealer.  “It is a wonder to me that you have put it through with the other peasants around here without him, for he is their general, their attorney and everything; they all follow his example in every matter and he bows to no one.  A year ago a prince passed through here; the way the old fellow took off his hat to him, really, it looked as if he wanted to say:  ‘You are one, I am another.’  To expect to get twenty-six pistoles for the mare!  But that is the unfortunate part of it, when a peasant acquires too much property.  When you come out on the other side of that oak wood, you walk for half an hour by the clock through his fields!  And everything arranged in first rate order all the way!  The day before yesterday I drove my team through the rye and wheat, and may God punish me if anything more than the horses’ heads showed up above the tops.  I thought I should be drowned.”

“Where did he get it all?” asked the receiver.

“Oh!” cried the horse-dealer, “there are a lot more estates like this around here; they call them Oberhofs.  And if they do not surpass many a nobleman’s, my name isn’t Marx.  The land has been held intact for generations.  And the good-for-nothing fellow has always been economical and industrious, you’ll have to say that much for him I You saw, didn’t you, how he worked away merely to save the expense of paying the blacksmith a few farthings?  Now his daughter is marrying another rich fellow; she’ll get a dowry, I tell you!  I happened to pass the linen closet; flax, yarn, tablecloths and napkins and sheets and shirts and every possible kind of stuff are piled up to the ceiling in there.  And in addition to that the old codger will give her six thousand thalers in cash!  Just glance about you; don’t you feel as if you were stopping with a count?”