“You are fools! Blockheads! Blockheads! Throughout your morning, your midday, your evening, your night, the machine howls for food, for food, for food—! You are the food! You are the living food!—The machine devours you like fodder and then spews you up again! Why do you batten the machines with your bodies?—Why do you oil the joints of the machines with your brains?—Why do you not let the machines starve, you fools?—Why do you not let them perish, blockheads—? Why do you feed them—? The more you feed them the more they greed for your flesh, for your bones, for your brains. You are ten thousand! You are a hundred thousand! Why do you not throw yourselves—a hundred thousand murdering fists—upon the machines and strike them dead—? _You_ are the masters of the machines—_you_! Not the others who walk in their white silk—! Turn the world about—! Stand the world on its head—! Murder the living and the dead—! Take the inheritance from living and dead—! You have waited long enough—! The hour has come!” A voice shouted from among the multitude: “Lead us on, Maria—!” A mighty wave—all the heads broke forward. The blood-red mouth of the girl laughed and flamed. The eyes above it flamed, huge and greenish black. She raised her arms with an unspeakably difficult, burden-raising, sweet, mad gesture. The slim body grew and stretched itself up. The girl’s hands touched above her hair-parting. Over her shoulders, her breasts, her hips, her knees, there ran an incessant, a barely perceptible trembling. It was as though the girl were carried higher and higher by this trembling, though she did not move her feet. She said: “Come...! Come...! I will lead you...! I will dance the dance of Death before you...! I will dance the dance of the Murderers before you...!” The multitude moaned. The multitude gasped. The multitude stretched out its hands. The multitude bowed head and neck low, as though its shoulders, its backs, should be a carpet for the girl. The multitude fell on its knees with a groan, one single beast felled with the hatchet. The girl raised her foot and stepped upon the neck of the outstretched beast.... A voice shouted out, sobbing with rage and pain: “You are not Maria—!” The multitude turned around. The multitude saw a man standing in the background of the arch, a man, from whose shoulders the coat had fallen. Under the coat he wore the white silk. The man was more ghastly to see than one who has bled to death. He stretched out his hand and pointed to the girl. He yelled out: “You are not Maria!! No—!! You are not Maria—!!” The heads of the multitude stared at the man who was a stranger among them, who wore the white silk.... “You are not Maria—!” he yelled. “Maria preaches peace—and not murder—!” The eyes of the multitude began to glare dangerously.