“You are a fool,” the bailiff said to the spokesman, with a smile, as he raised his narrow eyes in quest of some Gentile with whom he might share the fun. “You are a lot of fools. Better go home. There is no such paper in the world. Whoever told you there was?”
“Why, everybody says so. In most places they finished the job long ago. Only we are a lot of slow coaches, people say. And then, when the higher authorities find out about it, who will be fined or put in jail? We, poor peasants. As if we did not have troubles enough as it is.”
“What will you be put in jail for?” asked the bailiff, chuckling to himself.
Here a younger peasant whispered in the spokesman’s ear not to let himself be bamboozled.
Speaking with unwonted boldness, born of the conviction that the bailiff was suppressing a document of the Czar, the tall fellow said:
“You can’t fool us, your nobleness. We are only peasants, but what we know we know.” And he went on to enumerate villages where, according to rumour, the paper had already been read and acted upon. “Although uneducated, yet we are not such fools as your nobleness takes us for. If it is a ukase direct from the Czar we aren’t going to take chances, sir. Not we, sir. Better read it to us and let’s be done with it. We have no time to waste, sir.”
One of the Jews was going to make a suggestion, but he was shouted down and waved aside.
The bailiff made a gesture of amused despair and turned to go back, when the peasants stepped forward, and chattering excitedly, they gave him to understand that they would not let him go until he had shown them the imperial ukase. The purport of their remonstrance was to the effect that the Jews had bribed him to suppress the document. The bailiff took it all good-naturedly. In his heart of hearts he was looking forward to the sport of an anti-Jewish outbreak with delight; but the noise brought the local priest upon the scene—a kindly elderly man with the face of a whimpering peasant girl. He was a victim of official injustice himself and he implored the crowd to listen to reason. His face, at once comic and piteous, was the main cause of his failures. He was a well-educated priest, yet he was kept in this obscure town. His sacerdotal locks, meant to be long and silken, hung in stiff, wretched little clumps. Nevertheless, as he now stood in his purple broad-sleeved gown, appealing to the multitude of white figures, his cross sparkling in the sun, the spectacle was like a scene of the early days of Christianity.
“It is a great sin to circulate wicked falsehoods like that and it is just as much of a sin to credit them,” he said in a pained heartfelt voice. “Ours is a good Czar. He does not command his children to do violence to human beings.”
“Oh, well, little father,” one peasant broke in. “You don’t seem to have heard of it. That’s all. If the Czar has not ordered it, then why do they beat the Jews everywhere else and the police and soldiers stand by and see to it that they do the work well?”