"And why do the parsons preach so much about the scourge of God, the pestilence? Why we have never had a better promise of harvest than now. How do they know when Death will come? Only God can know beforehand whom He will destroy and whom He will keep alive." "Suspend your judgments, my good friends," resumed the rector, with an affectation of benevolence, "you can see that the hand of God is over us all. He can work great wonders, and it is not impossible that these wonders will come. You can perceive from the signs of Heaven that great changes are about to come on the earth. On Good Friday a bloody rain fell near the hill of Mádi; not long ago a flaming sword was visible in the sky three nights running; everywhere about curious big fungi have shot up from the ground, which turn red or green immediately they are broken. Earth and sky seem to feel that the hand of God is about to press heavily upon us." ("Deuce take this instructor of the people for befooling them so!" thought Mr. Kordé in his dog-kennel.) "Did you notice, my brothers, how the rats roamed all about the roads in broad daylight a fortnight ago, how they scuttled away from our landlords' granaries, and set out for another village, and how they stiffened and died in heaps on the way?" "There you are!" shouted one wiseacre, "the corn in the granary was poisoned!" ("Plague take thee, thou clodpole!" growled the cantor in his hiding-place; "it was the rats that were poisoned, not the corn.") "And we borrowed of that very corn a fortnight ago to last us till harvest time." "Then now we'll pay them back with interest!" bellowed one of the rustics, fiercely flourishing a pitchfork. ("I'll swear that's one of my pupils, he is so pugnacious," thought the cantor to himself.) "And I have already eaten bread made of that very corn, God help me!" cried another; "it is as blue as a toadstool when you break it in two." ("Lout! Tares and other rubbish were mixed up with it, and that made it look blue!") "And after I had eaten it I felt like to bursting." ("Naturally, for your wife did not bake it sufficiently, and you stuffed it into your greedy jaws while it was still hot.") "Yes, not a doubt of it, we have all been poisoned, we have eaten of Death." "My friends, allow me to put in a word," said the benign rector. "You know that I have always desired your welfare; but look now! this mortal danger has appeared in other districts also, possibly it may be a Divine visitation. There are villages in which two or three deaths have occurred in every house, there are other places in which whole families down to the very last poor member thereof have followed one another to the grave. I know of a man who a short time ago had nine sons, now he has nine corpses with him in the house." "The gentry have killed them also I'll be bound." "It is so! What would God want with so many dead men?"