Claus became furious. "Yes, you have, my young man," he shouted. "That is just what you have come for. Look you! I have worked for thirty-five years, and you have done nothing; now I am the nobleman and let you work for me! Is it not so with the aristocracy?" Claus leant himself against the plank with his arms folded and continued: "Yes, I am a devilish fine nobleman, you can believe me! And you will see how I shall flourish. I shall not be rich, but I shall be fat. You look disapproving. You don't agree with my plan, nor understand it. The upper class have invented it themselves, and a very excellent one it is."
Sten replied that in his opinion Claus was a bumpkin.
"Go and fetch the big hammer. You will do some extra work by way of punishment," Claus replied haughtily.
Sten's blood boiled over and he raised the iron rod against Claus. At the same moment he felt something give way in his body, and fell senseless to the ground.
When Sten awoke to consciousness he was lying in a bed at the hospital, and was condemned to inaction for several months, for he had broken a blood-vessel, and his recovery was doubtful. In the large ward one bed stood close to another, and as soon as it was empty there was always someone waiting to occupy it. Here he saw every day instances how those who did physical labour were exposed to accidents which other classes escaped. At one time it was a carpenter who had cut his foot; at another a mason who had fallen from a scaffolding. One day came a breweress who had scalded herself when boiling wort; on another a pewterer who had burnt his knee at the smelting oven.
Hitherto he had had no idea how widely spread human sufferings were, and when he contrasted his past with his present, he began to guess how the legend of the rich man, who could not enter heaven, had arisen. Thus he lay the whole summer, without fresh air or seeing anything green. He felt bitterly how the best time of the year was passing, and imagined how it looked in the country, and what people were doing every day. Numbers of monks came to the ward, and almost every day the crucifix was lifted by some bed-side to comfort a sufferer.
Sten often talked with the monks and he could not help sharing their view that the earth was a vale of tears. When his pains became severe he felt relief in contemplating the Crucified Who writhed on the cross, and he understood now why the Christian creed had been able to gain so many disciples. One day, when he was especially suffering, he had a visit from Claus, who had heard a report that Sten was dying. He felt now compelled to see and speak with the sick man, and, if possible, to comfort him; but in order to strengthen himself he went first into an ale-shop, with the result that he reached the hospital in a somewhat hilarious condition.
When he again met Sten, whose face had recovered its fair complexion and his hands their delicacy, his former respect for him awoke, and he confessed to himself that there were a finer and a coarser kind of men. He called Sten "sir," and advised him to think about his soul and to repent of his sins; he should not, he said, be sorry that he had to die, for the smiths' company would carry him to the grave, and afterwards hold such a funeral feast as had never been seen in the city. Then he threw out some delicate hints that it was a pity for the hospital to get Sten's clothes when he was dead, and at the same time expressed his admiration of the excellent wool of which Sten's coat was made; for the rest, he believed that old trousers could be altered, and told Sten above all things to take care that nothing was left in the pockets. Life, he said, was very troublesome, and parents who did not teach their children to work with their hands were worse than murderers, and to give children an education was to spoil them. Sten would have made a good smith, if he had learnt to wield the hammer from his childhood, and he might by this time have married the maiden from the weighing-house. As it was, she had engaged herself to one of the yeomen of the guard. Sten, however, should not be sad about that, for he had not much longer to live, but Claus would carry the flag at his funeral procession as a token that he had forgiven the young gentleman all the wrong he had done him. As he uttered these last words, Claus was so overcome by his noble sentiments that he wept as only a drunken man can.
But Claus never carried the flag, because he was not the guild's flag-bearer, and because Sten recovered. One fine autumn day he was dismissed from the hospital and told that he was no longer ill, but that he would never be strong enough to work. Now he realised the whole terrible truth of what Claus had said: his education had robbed him of the means of earning a livelihood. It was in vain that he went about and sought a place in an already organised society; there was no place for drones in this hive. The only thing remaining was to flee from this hive and seek another where the working-bees supported the drones. He thought of the convents where men did not work but lived very comfortably and could devote their leisure to such refined enjoyments as arts and sciences, and he wondered that he had not before this enlisted in the armies of the Church.