f to the
monastery, and the receiver's office will have to content itself with
that, just as the monastery has done. Does cash grow in my fields? No!
Corn grows in them! Where, then, are you going to get the cash?"

"You're not going to be cheated, you know!" cried the receiver.

"We must always stand by the old ways of doing things," said the Justice
solemnly. "Those were good times when the tablets with the lists of
imposts and taxes of the peasantry used to hang in the church. In those
days everything was fixed, and there were never any disagreements, as
there are nowadays all too often. Afterwards it was said that the
tablets with the hens and eggs and bushels and pecks of grain.
interfered with devotion, and they were done away with." With that he
went into the house.

"There is a stubborn fellow for you!" cried the horse-dealer, when he
could no longer see his business friend. He put his varnished hat back
on his head again with an air of vexation. "If he once makes up his mind
not to do something, the devil himself cannot bring him around. The
worst of it is that the fellow rears the best horses in this region, and
after all, if you get right down to it, lets them go cheap enough."

"An obstinate, headstrong sort of people it is that lives hereabouts,"
said the receiver. "I have just recently come from Saxony and I notice
the contrast. There they all live together, and for that reason they
have to be courteous and obliging and tractable toward one another. But
here, each one lives on his own property, and has his own wood, his own
field, his own pasture around him, as if there were nothing else in the
world. For that reason they cling so tenaciously to all their old
foolish ways and notions, which have everywhere else fallen into disuse.
What a lot of trouble I've had already with the other peasants on
account of this stupid change in the mode of taxation! But this fellow
here is the worst of all!" "The reason for that, Mr. Receiver, is that
he is so rich," remarked the horse-dealer. "It is a wonder to me that
you have put it through with the other peasants around here without him,
for he is their general, their attorney and everything; they all follow
his example in every matter and he bows to no one. A year ago a prince
passed through here; the way the old fellow took off his hat to him,
really, it looked as if he wanted to say: 'You are one, I am another.'
To expect to get twenty-six pistoles for the mare!