were asking twenty-five roubles. For some reason the dealer, after looking at Polikéy, seemed to doubt that he could buy it. But Polikéy pointed to his breast, saying that if he liked he could buy the whole shop, and asked to have the coat tried on; felt it, patted it, blew into the wool till he became permeated with the smell of it, and then took it off with a sigh.
“The price does not suit me. If you’ll let it go for fifteen roubles, now!” he said.
The dealer angrily threw the coat across the table, and Polikéy went out and cheerfully returned to his lodgings.
After supper, having watered Drum and given him some oats, he climbed up on the oven, took out the envelope with the money and examined it for a long time, and then asked a porter, who knew how to read, to read him the address and the words: “With an enclosure of one thousand six hundred and seventeen Assignation Roubles.” The envelope was made of common paper, and sealed with brown sealing-wax, with an anchor stamped on it. There was one large seal in the middle, four at the corners, and there was a drop of sealing-wax near the edge. Polikéy examined all this, and learnt it by heart. He even felt the sharp corners of the paper money. It gave him a kind of childish pleasure to know that he had so much money in his hands. He inserted the money into a hole in the lining of his cap, and lay down with his head on it; but even in the night he kept waking and feeling the envelope. And each time he found it in its place he experienced the pleasant feeling that here was he, the disgraced, the downtrodden Polikéy, carrying such a sum and delivering it up so accurately, as even the steward would not have done.