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"Not the least," said Levin gloomily, as they drove up to the house. At the steps there stood a trap tightly covered with iron and leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed with broad collar-straps. In the trap sat the chubby, tightly belted clerk who served Ryabinin as coachman. Ryabinin himself was already in the house, and met the friends in the hall.
Here, for no kind of reason, you've made that rascal a present of thirty thousand roubles." "Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?" "Of course, they must be counted. You didn't count them, but Ryabinin did. Ryabinin's children will have means of livelihood and education, while yours maybe will not!" "Well, you must excuse me, but there's something mean in this counting.
Levin went out of the room, slamming the door. Ryabinin looked towards the door and shook his head with a smile. "It's all youthfulness positively nothing but boyishness. Why, I'm buying it, upon my honor, simply, believe me, for the glory of it, that Ryabinin, and no one else, should have bought the copse of Oblonsky. And as to the profits, why, I must make what God gives. In God's name.
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled hardly perceptibly, catching the instantaneous change he knew so well in Levin's face, which had become as gloomy as it had been bright a minute before. "Have you quite settled about the forest with Ryabinin?" asked Levin. "Yes, it's settled. The price is magnificent; thirty-eight thousand. Eight straight away, and the rest in six years.
"Quite so, where you please," said Ryabinin with contemptuous dignity, as though wishing to make it felt that others might be in difficulties as to how to behave, but that he could never be in any difficulty about anything. On entering the study Ryabinin looked about, as his habit was, as though seeking the holy picture, but when he had found it, he did not cross himself.
"What is there to talk over? But do sit down." "I don't mind if I do," said Ryabinin, sitting down and leaning his elbows on the back of his chair in a position of the intensest discomfort to himself. "You must knock it down a bit, prince. It would be too bad. The money is ready conclusively to the last farthing. As to paying the money down, there'll be no hitch there."
You think it mean of me to count the trees in my forest, while you make Ryabinin a present of thirty thousand; but you get rents from your lands and I don't know what, while I don't and so I prize what's come to me from my ancestors or been won by hard work.... We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor of the powerful of this world, and who can be bought for twopence halfpenny."
My name is Pyotr Yegorov Ryabinin, nicknamed Shilo the Awl. I understand something about your affairs. I can read and write. I'm no fool, so to speak." He grasped the hand the mother extended to him, and wringing it, turned to the master of the house. "There, Stepan, see, Varvara Nikolayevna is a good lady, true. But in regard to all this, she says it is nonsense, nothing but dreams.
Levin, who had meanwhile been putting his gun away in the cupboard, was just going out of the door, but catching the merchant's words, he stopped. "Why, you've got the forest for nothing as it is," he said. "He came to me too late, or I'd have fixed the price for him." Ryabinin got up, and in silence, with a smile, he looked Levin down and up.
"Kostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin comes...I told him to come today, he's to be brought in and to wait for me..." "Why, do you mean to say you're selling the forest to Ryabinin?" "Yes. Do you know him?" "To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, 'positively and conclusively." Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed. "Positively and conclusively" were the merchant's favorite words.
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