ublic thoroughfares with a loud voice and amidst the clash of arms?
Ah! who can say? So much only is certain that the tissues of this
network of calumny spread far and wide. It is possible to make human
weakness, ignorance, and rustic stupidity believe almost anything. The
severity of the gentry in the past had, no doubt, contributed something
to this end; but certainly not much, for, as a matter of fact, the
common people raged most furiously against those of the gentry who had
done them most good; it was their benefactors they treated the most
savagely. And then, too, the usual vices of every community, the love of
loot, the thirst for vengeance, blind fury, anger of heart, low greed,
were so many additional predisposing causes of the horrors that
followed.

Yet a red thread ran all through this woof of sorrow and mourning;
"blind destiny," upon whom man so cheerfully casts the burden of his
sins, had but little to do with it at all.

* * * * *

It was after vespers, and Thomas Bodza was taking a walk across the
fields. This was his usual promenade. Sometimes he went as far as the
boundaries of the neighbouring village with a little book under his arm
which he perused with philosophic tranquility.

It was the works of Horace, all of whose verses he knew by heart; for,
inasmuch as it had once been very wisely observed in his presence by
some distinguished scholar that no other human lute-strummer had ever
sung so beautifully and so grandly as Horace, it thenceforth became a
point of honour with Mr. Bodza to read nothing else; so he never
troubled his head about any other poet or poets, whatever language they
wrote in. He made an exception in favour of himself indeed, for he also
had his moments of inspiration, but even his poems were not _quite_ as
good as those of Horace.

And now also he was reading over again those lines he already knew so
well. He had sat down to rest beneath a large poplar tree on a big round
stone that had often served him as a seat before, and he had just come
to the verses, beginning with the beautiful words:

"Nunc est bibendum! Nunc pede libero,
Pulsando tellus...."

when the sound of approaching footsteps disturbed his tranquil enjoyment.

"I have been awaiting you, Ivan," said the master, thrusting his little
book beneath his arm again, but not before he had carefully turned down
the leaf at the place where he had stopped reading, lest he shou