But no one stirred, and the silence remained unbroken.
"Well, then," continued Markus, "neither is there here a single one who has the right to rail at the rich whom he would hate and supplant. For each of you in their place would do what the rich do. The affairs of the world would be no better conducted were you, not they, at the helm.
"How you delude and flatter and fawn upon one another! You continually hear that you are the innocent, downtrodden ones who have so much to suffer; who are worthy of so much better things; who are so good and so powerful; who would rule the world so well; whose turn it now is to have ease and luxury.
"Men, even if this were so, would it be well that you should always be told it? Would it not make of you conceited fools? Would not the reality revenge itself frightfully upon yourselves, and upon those fawners and flatterers?
"It is, instead, falsehood and conceit.
"You would not rule the world better—you have neither the wisdom nor the charity to do so. You are no more worthy of pity than are your oppressors, for when they injure your bodies they injure also their own souls. The rich are in paths more perilous than are the poor, and it is always better to suffer wrong than to commit it.
"The good things of the earth do not yet belong to you, for you would make the same misuse of them as do those against whom you are being incited.
"Wage war, and desist not until death; but the war of the righteous against the unrighteous, of the wise and charitable against the stupid and sensual. And question not whence come your companions in arms, for you are not the only unhappy ones, you are not alone merciful among men, and good-will and uprightness are not the exclusive possessions of the poor."
Although it seemed to Johannes that Markus' voice was not so wonderfully impressive as at other times, the people had become very attentive. And when he stopped, and sat down without having made a particularly oratorical or cumulative close, they all were still for many seconds. But not a foot stamped, not a hand stirred.