The avaricious old man jumps at the proposal, but Marenka will have nothing to say to the arrangement, for Vasek is almost an idiot, and a stammerer as well. Kezal then proceeds to buy Jeník out for three hundred gulden. The latter, however, stipulates that in the agreement it shall only be set down that Marenka is to marry the son of Mícha.

Jeník, a young peasant, and Marenka, the daughter of the rich farmer Krusina, love each other dearly; but Kezal, a kind of go-between in the Bohemian marriage-market, tells Krusina that he can produce a rich husband for his daughter in the shape of Vasek, the son of Mícha.