in them to love anyone. Woe to those whom they had cause to
remember!

So he crept softly to the spot and listened.

"If these people should rise they will not leave one stone upon
another," the headsman's apprentice was saying.

"And do you suppose they will rise up because you tell them to?"

"I have thought the matter well out. The common folks about here do not
love their masters, there is no reason why they should. Their lords have
kicked and cuffed and spat upon them, and treated them worse than dogs.
You have but to cast a burning fagot into the mass of discontent, and
it will flame up at once. Even the wisest among them who do know
something about it, are the most narrow-minded. If there be two versions
of a matter they always believe the most absurd one. I told them to be
on their guard against danger. I told them to look after their wells and
their granaries, as their masters wanted to poison them. When they asked
why? I told them that the whole kingdom was surrounded on every side by
enemies, and the gentry wanted to raise a pestilence in the kingdom to
keep the enemy out of it. At my words the common people at once became
suspicious, for they have heard for a long time that the gentry were
expecting a pestilence, and as this was the first explanation of the
prophesied epidemic that had come to their ears, they believed it at
once. Suspicion is contagious. And as the gentry have since had the
imprudence to order a separate graveyard to be dug for the corpses of
those who may die of the cholera (naturally in order to prevent the dead
bodies from spreading the contagion), the common folks have believed my
words as if I were a prophet, and quite expect that the gentry are going
to poison the poor people. The digging of the churchyard they take to be
a first move in that direction."

"Devilish clever of you, Ivan, I must say."

"And then don't forget the announcement of the Kassa doctors to the
effect that if the common folks will not take the salutary bismuth
powder voluntarily, it must be forced upon them, thrown into their
wells and scattered about their barns. It looks as if everyone was
intent upon playing into our hands."

"Does the young chap upstairs suspect anything?"

"I don't think so, but let us speak in a lower tone. I promised to hide
him here. He fancies he has shot his captain dead. He caught him with
his sweetheart and banged away at him; the man fell to the ground, but
he did not die.