e
could hold his own against his giant rivals for at least ten years. He
forgot that the giants were cunning as well as strong, and that they
did not despise the smallest artifice.

When the railway directors issued their prospectus, inviting all
contractors to send in contracts for iron rails, etc., Ivan thought to
himself, "Now, I will have some fun. The shareholders of the
Joint-Stock Company offer their iron six per cent. cheaper than it
costs them. I will offer to the railway directors to deliver iron
rails at ten per cent. cheaper than they cost _me_. I shall lose fifty
thousand gulden, but I shall have the satisfaction of punishing my
neighbors for their folly in lowering the price of the raw material."

Simple fool! Just as an honorable gentleman imagines that when a
letter is sealed no one would venture to open it, so Ivan thought that
all the offers were read together, and that the most advantageous to
the company was accepted.

Good gracious! nothing of the kind.

It is always settled beforehand who is to have the contract. When the
proposals come in it sometimes happens that some one makes a yet lower
offer than that of the _protege_, and this last is then told to take
pen and ink and write an offer proposing to give the goods half per
cent. lower than the offer made by the outsider.

This is a well-known trick, and it is only men like Ivan, whose minds
are occupied with petrifactions and the stars, who are in ignorance
that such things are done.

The contract offered by the shareholders was half per cent. lower than
the one offered by Ivan.

But even this rebuff didn't daunt him. Two and two make four, and
those who sin against multiplication must come to ruin sooner or
later.

Ivan continued making in his workshop iron bars and rails. He
accumulated a store in his magazines. Some time they would be wanted.

* * * * *

The Bondavara Railroad was to be made.

Csanta wanted to sell his houses in X----; the whole street was for
sale. He said he was going to live in Vienna, and to fill his office
of one of the directors to the company. He was to receive a large
salary, and to have little or nothing to do. He had changed all his
gold into papers--there is no use nowadays for houses or land or
cattle or mines; nothing is good but paper. _It_ wants neither groom
nor manure nor pay nor machinery.

Therefore, he wished to sell the whole street. Fortunately, there was
s