Then two Terajewiczes and four Stypulkowskis and three Mickiewiczes shouted, “Vivat equality,” taking the side of Skoluba. Meanwhile Buchmann was crying, “Agreement will be our ruin!” Sprinkler yelled: “We can get along alone without you; long live our marshal, the Maciek of Macieks! Let him have the baton!” The Dobrzynskis cried, “We beg you to take it!” but the rest of the gentry shouted with one voice, “We forbid it!” The throng was breaking up into two groups, and, nodding their heads in contrary directions, one faction cried, “We forbid,” and the other, “We beg you.”
Old Maciek sat in their midst the one dumb man, and his head alone was unmoved. Opposite him stood Baptist, resting his hands on his club, and, moving his [pg 184] head, which was supported on the end of the club, like a pumpkin stuck on the end of a long pole, he nodded it, now forward and now backward, and cried incessantly, “Sprinkle, sprinkle!” Up and down the room the mobile Razor ran constantly from Sprinkler to Maciej's bench, but Bucket slowly walked across the room from the Dobrzynskis to the other gentry, as if he were trying to reconcile them. One shouted continually, “Shave,” and the other, “Pour”; Maciek held his peace, but he was evidently beginning to be angry.
For a quarter of an hour the uproar seethed, when above the bawling crowd, out of the throng of heads, there leapt aloft a shining pillar. This was a sword two yards long and a whole palm broad, sharp on both edges. Evidently it was a German sword, forged of Nuremberg steel; all gazed at the weapon in silence. Who had raised it up? They could not see, but at once they guessed.
“That is the penknife, long live the penknife!” they shouted; “vivat the penknife, the jewel[135] of Rembajlo hamlet! Vivat Rembajlo, Notchy, Half-Goat, My-boy!”
At once Gerwazy, for it was he, pressed through the crowd into the middle of the room, carrying his flashing penknife; then, lowering the point before Maciek as a sign of greeting, he said:—
“The penknife bows to the switch. Brothers, gentlemen of Dobrzyn, I will give you no advice. Not at all; I will only tell you why I have assembled you; but what to do and how to do it, decide for yourselves. You know the rumour has long been current among the hamlets that great things are preparing in the world. Father Robak has been talking of this; do not you all [pg 185] know this?” (“We know it,” they shouted.) “Well, so for a wise head,” continued the orator, looking sharply at them, “two words are enough. Is not that true?” (“It is,” they said.) “Since the French Emperor is coming from one direction,” said the Warden, “and the Russian Tsar from the other, there will be war; the Tsar and the Emperor, kings and kings, will start to pummel one another as monarchs usually do—and shall we sit quiet? When the great begin to choke the great, let us choke the smaller, each his own man. When we set to smiting above and below, great men great ones, and small men small ones, then all the rascals will be overthrown, and thus happiness and the Polish Commonwealth will bloom again. Is not this so?”
“As true as if you were reading it out of a book,” they said.
“It is true!” repeated Baptist, “drop after drop, every bit.”
“I am always ready to shave!” exclaimed Razor.
“Only make an agreement,” courteously begged Bucket, “under whose leadership Baptist and Maciej shall proceed.”