"I had a fearful to-do with Tiralla the other day, your reverence," said Kranz of the gendarmerie, who was sitting at the end of the table stroking his fierce-looking, greyish moustache. "I felt quite sorry for the woman. I had to speak. I didn't think it could be possible, but I was told of it, and I found out for myself that it was true--Tiralla lets the day-labourers kill hares for him. It makes no difference to him whether they're on other people's property or not. I taxed him with it, and he didn't even deny it, he simply laughed. But his wife turned as red as fire, she felt so ashamed of him. 'It's a disgrace!' she cried, and looked at me with eyes full of tears. And then she gave him a real, good scolding. 'Haven't I told you again and again that if you want to eat hares, you're to shoot them yourself? If you don't do so I'll throw them out of the kitchen next time you bring them, I swear I will.'"
"Bravo!" they all shouted. "Splendid!" There was only one more thing she ought to have done and that was soundly to box his ears, the scoundrel. They were so furious with him that they seemed entirely to forget that they lived in a country where hares are no man's property, so to speak, and are often killed by passers-by as they gambol about fearlessly in the immense, lonely fields that extend for miles.
The younger men's eyes sparkled as they listened. The tax-collector, the clerk from the post office, and the schoolmaster were none of them thirty. The forester, who was sitting next to the clerk from the post office, and Jokisch, the inspector of the settlement near the lake, could also be reckoned amongst her admirers, although they were married men; and the gendarme was still a good-looking fellow, in spite of his greyish moustache and an almost grown-up daughter.
"I knew all about those hares," said Bilkowski, the forester, laughing.
"You knew it?" The gendarme opened his eyes wide.
"Oh, I say, don't look like that. If I were to publish everything that happens here," and the forester shrugged his shoulders, "I should never get any further."
"But a man ought to--it's his duty--I'm obliged," and the gendarme, who had only been transferred to this post the spring before, pulled out an enormous note-book from his pocket with a determined look, and took out the pencil. "I always write everything down. Things were bad enough in Upper Silesia, but they seem to be worse here."
"Oh, you'll get used to them," said the forester reassuringly. "It's really very nice here. I shouldn't like to live anywhere else now. It was also rather difficult for me at first, and especially for my wife. She made enough fuss about it. But now I never hear anything more, and"--he paused for a moment, then added with a smile that was half embarrassed, half sly--"I only see what I want to see. What else is there for me to do? Am I to act in opposition to the nobility, who would continue to do exactly what they liked all the same, or am I to let the peasants kill me when they commit outrages in the royal woods? Of course I always go to the Przykop when I hear a shot; but if they don't shoot, if they only make use of their cudgels, what then?"
He was right. They all agreed that it was no easy matter to be a forester. Still the gendarme did not exactly approve of Mr. Bilkowski speaking so frankly. "But, my dear fellow," and Bilkowski patted him on the shoulder, "we're all in the same boat. Why shouldn't I speak frankly amongst friends?"
The priest cast a glance at the open door leading into the tap-room. Then he whispered to the schoolmaster, "Close it."