"Unquestionably I will be done with him to-morrow, and I would end with him even to-day, notwithstanding the late hour, were it not that I desire first to calm down and not create any foolish disturbance. I do not like this, and I would not advise those apostles to peer into Jastrzeb. As I live, I would not advise it." "Have they any intention of paying you a visit?" "Certainly. If not to me personally, then to my farmhands. They announced in Rzeslewo that they would cause an agrarian strike in the entire vicinity." "Then my advice, to drive out one wedge with another, is the most feasible." "Assuredly. I will adopt that course without delay." "I know," said Gronski, "that they want to inaugurate agrarian strikes throughout the whole country. They will not succeed as the peasant element will repel their efforts. They, like most people from the cities, do not take into account the relation of man to the soil. Nevertheless, there will be considerable losses and the confusion will increase, and this is what they chiefly care for. Ah! Shakespeare's 'sun of foolery' not only shines in our land, but is in the zenith." "If we are talking of that kind of a sun, we can, like a former king of Spain, say that it never sets in our possessions." But Gronski spoke farther: "Socialism--good! That, of course, is a thing more ancient than Menenius Agrippa. That river has flown for ages. At times, when covered by other ideas, it coursed underground, and later emerged into the broad daylight. At times it subsides, then swells and overflows. At present we have a flood, very menacing, which may submerge not only factories, cities, and countries, but even civilization. Above all, it threatens France, where comfort and money have displaced all other ideas. Socialism is the inevitable result of that. Capital wedded to demagogism cannot breed any other child; and if that child has the head of a monster and mole, so much the worse for the father. It demonstrates that superfluous wealth may be a national danger. But this is not strange. Privilege is an injustice against which men have fought for centuries. Formerly the princes, clergy, and nobility were vested with it. To-day nobody has any; money possesses all. In truth, Labor has stepped forth to combat with it." "This begins to smell to me like an apology for socialism," observed Dolhanski.