This silenced them and gave the old man an occasion to hold forth in an angry tone: “One very true thing he has said: we must look to our own interests!—Be quiet there! You have said your say, let others say theirs!—These fellows bawl and bawl, and think themselves great men!—If shrieking meant thinking, then every loud-mouthed brawler would have a better head than even our priest himself! You laugh at me; but I say to you: how was it that year ... when our noblemen rebelled? Remember how they threw dust in our eyes, and swore that as soon as Poland existed, we should have our will ... our own lands ... and forests—and everything. And they made promises and speeches, and every other man of us helped them; and what have we of it now?—Ye may hearken to the nobles, if ye be fools; but I am too old a bird to be caught with chaff!” “Smite him on the mouth, that he may be still!” cried a voice. He went on nevertheless: “And now I am a noble, as much as any of them all: I have my rights, and none dares lay a finger on me!” But his voice was drowned in a torrent of jeers that poured down on him from all sides. “You swine that grunt about your delights, and are happy to have a sty and a full trough!” “Once fatted, you shall feel the club on your skull, and the knife at your throat!” “Did not a gendarme flog him at last fair? And yet he prates about no one daring to touch him!” “A great noble he is, and most free to be eaten by lice!” “Truly the straw stuffed in his boots could teach as much wisdom as he!” “He knows not to judge a fowl’s worth, yet he comes here to enlighten us!” The old man was foaming with rage, but only said: “Ye scum of the land! ... that cannot even respect grey hairs!” “What then? Must a grey mare be respected, for that she is grey?” They roared with laughter at this; but presently their attention was diverted to the roof of the office, on to which the constable Joseph had climbed, and, holding to a chimney, was gazing into the distance. “Joseph!” they cried to him in a merry mood. “Shut your mouth, lest something fall into it!” For a flock of pigeons was wheeling above his head. But he only shouted with all his might: “He is coming ... coming! Has passed the turning from Krylak!” The assembly now gathered close round the building, and gazed quietly along the road that as yet lay empty. The scrivener hastily donned his very best clothes; again the air rang with his wife’s outcries, and the clinking of plates, and the rumbling of displaced furniture, and the noise of many feet. In a short time, the Voyt too appeared on the scene: standing on the door-step, red as a beetroot, perspiring, breathless, but adorned with his chain of office. Casting his eyes on the crowd around him, he shouted in fierce tones: “Silence, men! This Office is not a tavern.” “Come round here, Peter! I’ll tell you what!” Klemba cried to him. “There is no Peter here! I am an official,” he answered loftily.