ith a great big
coat of arms, and castles to dwell in. He forgot, however, to reflect
that he, with whom he compared his own fate, was gifted at the outset
with intellect and virile courage, qualities with which he himself had
only been very modestly equipped by nature; their common misery in early
life was the sole point of resemblance between them.

[Footnote 8: Pottage.]

These first bitter impressions never left his mind. He registered the
disfavour of fortune and the fruits of his own limited capacity among
the grievances of the oppressed nationality to which he belonged. Years
of want, his little dilapidated dwelling--granted him in his capacity of
village teacher but shoved away into an obscure corner of Hetfalu--his
meagre barley-bread, his sordid frock-coat--all these things aggravated
the anguish of his soul.

His occasional intercourse with the lord of the manor, the arrogant and
pretentious Hetfalusy, was not calculated to reconcile him with his
destiny. Hetfalusy regarded as a profitless loafer every man who did not
seek his bread with spade and hoe, unless, of course, he happened to be
a gentleman by birth. He applied this theory to the schoolmaster race
especially, whom he conceived to have been invented for the express
purpose of eternally hounding on the common folks against their lawful
masters, the gentry. As if the world could not go on comfortably without
the peasant learning his letters! What he heard in church was quite
enough for him surely! On one occasion, when mention was made in his
presence of a village shepherd who had forged a bank-note, he observed
that if the fellow had not learnt to write he would never have gone
astray. The national school teachers, he said, were the natural
attorneys of the agricultural population as against the landlords. And
Hetfalusy gave practical expression to his belief whenever he had the
chance. The corn he was bound to supply to the schoolmaster was always
measured out to him from the bottom of the sieve; he seized the
courtyard of the school for his threshers, so that during school-time
not a word of the lessons could be heard for the racket; he never
repaired the building set apart for the cultivation of the muses, but
looked on while the schoolmaster himself patched up the holes in his
wall with balls of clay borrowed from his own garden, and re-thatched
the dilapidated rush-roof with his own hand. Frequently he would rate
the schoolmaster in the public