“But how can he settle accounts when we are getting into debt all the time? Money or no money, yet the winter here has cost eighty thousand rubles, and now there isn’t a silver ruble in the house. And all owing to his kindheartedness. You see, he’s such a simple bárin that it would be hard to find his equal: that’s the very reason that he’s going to ruin—going to ruin, all for nothing.” And the old man almost wept.
Nekhliudof woke up about eleven, and called me in.
“They haven’t sent me any money yet,” says he. “But it isn’t my fault. Shut the door,” says he.
I shut the door.
“Here,” says he, “take my watch or this diamond pin, and pawn it. They will give you more than one hundred and eighty rubles for it, and when I get my money I will redeem it,” says he.
“No matter, sir,” says I. “If you don’t happen to have any money, it’s no consequence; let me have the watch if you don’t mind. I can wait for your convenience.”
I can see that the watch is worth more than three hundred.
Very good. I pawned the watch for a hundred rubles, and carried him the ticket. “You will owe me eighty rubles,” says I, “and you had better redeem the watch.”
And so it happened that he still owed me eighty rubles.
After that he began to come to us again every day. I don’t know how matters stood between him and the prince, but at all events he kept coming with him all the time, or else they would go and play cards upstairs with Fedotka. And what queer accounts those three men kept between them! this one would lend money to the other, the other to the third, yet who it was that owed the money you never could find out.