As the boys listened, their sentiments underwent a change. They felt that the greatest excesses of an ignorant people, in the paroxysm of their fury, made frantic by oppression, were in a great measure to be laid to the account of their oppressors.
"We," continued Gabriel, perceiving the impression he had made, "are called bloodthirsty, and viewed with horror, because we have shed much blood in a short time; but they have been shedding it all the time. Which, my brother, carries the most water to the sea, the river that waters the valley, and whose stream is always full, or the mountain torrent that floods the vale in the spring, and then leaves a dry channel?"
"The river, to be sure," replied Walter.
"Such is the difference between them and us. For hundreds of years there has not been a day when the peasant's blood has nor flowed at the will of his master. We guillotine a noble, or a priest; the news flies over all lands. Who knows, or cares to know, the misery he had inflicted upon the poor, and by which he had deserved a thousand deaths? Our banished aristocrats are scattered over Europe and America. They are learned men, of noble blood; tell their story at every court, among all peoples, and write it in books for all to read; while the peasant has suffered in silence, perished in prisons by starvation, and in the galleys, as unregarded as the dead leaves that strew yonder vineyard."
"I never thought of all these things before," said Walter, when Gabriel concluded; "this is indeed a story of fearful oppression."
"It is a true story, citizen. For ages the blood of the oppressed has been crying from the ground, and, at last, vengeance has come."
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE LAST DAY WITH THE PEASANTS.
That night, as the boys sat around their fire, Ned observed, "Walter, it appears to me that you have done the very thing you have been talking about so long."
"I don't understand you, Ned."