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The price of grain falls so low that the cost of gathering it is greater than the market value, and it is often left to fall unreaped in the fields. When the price falls very low, complaints arise that there is no place to send it, since, when the ruble stands high, as it invariably does at the prospect of large crops, the demand from abroad is stopped.
I was just on the point of saying to her that she was to give me some small coins, when she bent swiftly down to my hand, and tried to kiss it, evidently imaging that I had given her the ruble. I muttered something, and quitted the kitchen. I was ashamed, ashamed to the verge of torture, as I had not been for a long time.
As he swept toward the earth the peaks of the Andes rose above him. Down, down, down he dropped, looking out keenly for trees and jagged rocks. At last he saw a level stretch of land just below. The rains had carried sand and ruble down from the mountains and filled a valley perhaps three hundred feet in diameter with the wash of the slopes.
Last time I lent you two small notes on your ring, when I could have bought a new one at the jeweler's for a ruble and a half." "Give me four rubles, and I will redeem it; it belonged to my father. I expect some money soon." "A ruble and a half! and I shall take the interest in advance." "A ruble and a half!" protested the young man. "Please yourself whether you take it or not."
"That's the way he did," you see; and the others, seeing the document, will agree. BOLSHÓV. That's right, there's no harm in bargaining: if they don't take it at twenty-five kopeks, they'll take it at half a ruble; but if they won't take it at half a ruble, they'll grab for it with both hands at seventy kopeks. We'll profit, anyhow.
But I, by the most complicated, and cunning, and evil practices, which have been heaped up for centuries, have acquired for myself the position of an owner of the inexhaustible ruble, that is to say, one in which, never working myself, I can make hundreds and thousands of people toil for me which also I do; and I imagine that I pity people, and I wish to assist them.
As to the Emperor Alexander, he swore that he would sacrifice his last ruble, his last soldier, before he would consent to let Napoleon reign in France. Marie Louise knew too well the feeling that animated the Congress at Vienna, to imagine that her husband had the slightest chance of success.
The sight of this woman touched me, but not at all as had been the case in the Lyapinsky house; there, my pity for these people made me instantly feel ashamed of myself: but here, I rejoiced because I had at last found what I had been seeking, a hungry person. I gave her a ruble, and I recollect being very glad that others saw it. The old woman, on seeing this, immediately begged money of me also.
She is as rich as a Jew, and can advance five thousand rubles at a moment's notice; yet she will take in pledge objects worth as little as a ruble. She is quite a providence to many of our fellows but such an old hag! I tell you what I would do. I would kill that damnable old hag, and take all she is possessed of, without any qualm of conscience," exclaimed the student excitedly.
And if there is no need to imprison, beat, and kill men every time the landlord collects his rents, every time those who are in want of bread have to pay a swindling merchant three times its value, every time the factory hand has to be content with a wage less than half of the profit made by the employer, and every time a poor man pays his last ruble in taxes, it is because so many men have been beaten and killed for trying to resist these demands, that the lesson has now been learnt very thoroughly.
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