“My advice is: Vote as the officials wish. A school there must be: the worst is better than none. The one you wish for, ye’ll not get: ’tis no use knocking your heads against a wall. Won’t you vote?—Then they will not ask your leave.” “But,” cried a bystander, “what can they do, if we give no money?” “You are foolish. They’ll take it. Will you refuse?—They will sell even your last cow, and send you to prison for mutiny into the bargain. Is that clear?—For,” he added, turning to the Lipka folk, “ye have to do now, not with the Squire, but with the head official: a man who is not to be trifled with!—I tell you, do as they bid, and thank God things are no worse!” Such as held his views here chimed in; and old Ploshka, after musing for some time, said on a sudden: “Ye say true; and Roch misleads and seduces our folk.” To this, one of the Przylek husbandmen added with emphasis: “He is with the Manor folk, and therefore stirs us up against the Government.” An outcry arose against him on every side; but he, undaunted, went on as soon as they let him. “Those,” he said, looking sagely around him, “those are fools that help him. If anyone likes this not, let him come forward: I’ll call him a fool to his face. Such men know not that it hath been so from all time: the gentry rebel and drive our folk to ruin; but who has to pay, when payday comes? Why, we peasants! When the Cossacks are quartered in your villages, who will get the beatings? who will suffer and be sent to prison? Only we peasants! The gentlefolk will not move a finger for you; they will slink away and leave you in the lurch, the Judases!—and, moreover, they will feast the officials in their manors!” “Ha! What is the people in their eyes that they should stir for them?” cried one; and another: “If they could, serfdom would be restored to-morrow!” “Gregory says,” the former speaker continued, “‘let them teach in Polish; or, if they will not, let us vote no schools and no money for them.’—Very fine. But ’tis only a labourer who can say to his master: ‘I will not work,’ throw an insult in his face, and yet escape a thrashing by running away. We farmer folk cannot flee, and must needs stay and take the beating. Therefore I say it will come cheaper for you to build the school than to resist the officials. True, they will not teach our language; but they will never make Russians of us for all that: we shall none of us pray to God or speak among ourselves save as we do now, even as our mothers taught us! “Finally, I repeat: Stand up for your own interests only! Let the nobles tear each other to pieces: ’tis no affair of ours. Let them bite and fight: these are no more our brethren than those. And a plague upon them all!” Here he was shouted down by the crowd that pressed about him. In vain did the miller and a few others take his part. Those on Gregory’s side came near using their fists, and things were looking very bad, when old Prychek cried: “The gendarmes are listening!”