To look at him you would have said it was Vena’s own bridal day that was being celebrated. And nothing would have embittered his gay humour, only one question from neighbour Kmoch, Barushka’s father, vexed him. “How many wagons are required to bring home Staza’s marriage portion,” he enquired with a very saucy leer.
On this Vena vented his brimming choler in these words “You have not wagons enough to carry home a single one of her good qualities. So you want to be sarcastic do you? What do you know, ye peasant proprietors, of the essentials of a happy marriage? You barter your daughters on the market place to the man who makes the highest bid. ‘A crown! two crowns! ten crowns! twelve crowns!’—those are your daughters. And so you would sneer would you? He who throws down most of the dross is the heaven-sent husband. And then you shrink into your pension house when you have accomplished this feat of wondrous wisdom, and how many wagons are wanted to carry your pensioner’s portion? I would undertake to wheel you away, portion and all, on a hand barrow.”
Here Vena had worked himself into a frenzy, so that he did not know when he ought to conclude his declamation, although we must add in conclusion that all the neighbours condemned Kmoch’s ill-timed question.
“She will not be such a one,” continued Vena, “that her father must wander through the
