"Well now, I have only brought you some pears as usual."
"They were for the gracious favour which the young gentleman has been so kind as to show me."
"I have shown you no kind of favour. You wanted justice and you have obtained it. Take back your gold!"
"Why should I take it back? Hasn't the young gentleman deserved it for all his trouble? Did he not get the dot put on the 'i'?"
"I will not accept a handful of gold for a dot over an 'i.'"
"But it's worth it to me? It's not a bit too much. The young gentleman needn't take offence. He can pay his debts with it."
"Oh, you have no debts, do you say? Don't tell me a Viennese dandy has no debts. You owe neither the tailor nor the host anything? What, don't you want to make your sweetheart a present?"
"Who could ever believe it? How you blush. Well, take it, make merry with it, gamble it away with good comrades. For I won't have it back."
"I drink no wine, I don't gamble, I have no good comrades; this money you will take, for it hurts me to receive it. Those I serve pay me for what I do. He who does such work as mine asks for no reward but his master's, and can take no bribe from another. Take your gold back."
"As you will, Mr. Ráby," said the Jew, and he put the ducats in his pocket.
"Very good then, Mr. Ráby," pursued the Jew. (He no longer thought of him as "young Mr. Matyi.") "But before I leave this place, nay, before you send me packing, I must needs have three words with you."
"Now the first is this: since I first weathered winter's snow and summer's dust on this good Mother Earth of ours, I never before met a man who was frightened at money. I see him for the first time to-day. You were positively averse to keeping my gold. Nay, I believe that you wanted to break my head on account of it. And now I find you have no sweetheart, you neither drink nor gamble; you fraternise with no one. That again is something quite unheard-of. And finally, a man will not dot the 'i' of another person's writing, that also is something out of the common, let me tell you."
"Well for one word I think that is long enough--what else?"
"The second concerns myself. As truly as that I yesterday was 'Rothesel,' and to-day am 'Rotheisel,' so surely is it that Rotheisel won't neglect a treasure which Rothesel has discovered. I know of a treasure, in fine, for the carrying off of which, as in the fairy tales, only clean hands can avail."