It is very rare that Franko creates a true narrative poem and the best example is the _Nobleman’s Pranks_, a picture of peasant life in Galicia on the eve of the abolition of serfdom. Pan Mihucki, a strong willed Polish landlord, could not believe that this liberation would ever take place. He could not believe either that the peasant had any rights, even those which were guaranteed by the law. When the devoted priest on his estate endeavored to preach temperance and to teach the children to read and write, the autocratic master ordered him to be put to work in the fields like a common peasant despite the laws of the land which exempted priests from such labor. The priest was compelled to work until he dropped dead. The imperial commissioner, an Austrian German, tried in vain to moderate the lord’s wrath when he learned that serfdom had been abolished and when all remedies were useless, and the new order was introduced, he placed the Polish landlord in jail. It was an overwhelming shock to Pan Mihucki and though he was soon released, his time was over and within a year he died abroad. His widow returned but she was entirely in the power of the Jewish agent who held the mortgages on the estate and soon she too disappeared, “And Moshko bought the village.” It was a grim warning of a situation that was far too common in Galicia and not generally recognized. The priest is one of those types that Franko particularly appreciated and to which he returns again and again. He is a man who does all that he can for his fellows and perishes in his attempts to aid them but at the time he is so conscious of how much more he could have done, that he feels no self-satisfaction even amid the plaudits of others. This type of a lost leader appears in a poignant form in the _Death of Cain_. Old Cain who has struggled with the curse of God for centuries finally learns that the way to a peaceful and quiet life is through the virtues of a man’s own heart. He returns to men to tell them of the new truth and his great grandson Lamech, old and blind, shoots him with an arrow directed by a little child. Ignorance and misunderstanding prevent Lamech from learning the message that the old sufferer had wished to give him.