"I am sorry to hear such things of my friends."
"Of your friends?" asked the minister in astonishment.
"Yes, of my friends. For, without any purpose of mine, and often without, exactly knowing why, I have always found myself on the plebeian side, whenever in history the conflict between patricians and plebeians has become marked. I was a sworn adherent of the Gracchi and other Roman demagogues; I fought with the Independents against the Cavaliers, and I confess that even in the terrible peasants' wars I felt more sympathy for the poor oppressed serfs, whom brutal treatment had brutalized, than for the high-mighty, all-powerful barons and counts, who were not a whit less brutal for all their splendor and power."
The minister listened to these words with a smile of incredulity, as if he were listening to the rhodomontades of goslings who assume the air of accomplished roués.
"Very good! very good!" he said "You clever people are fond of paradoxes. You bring that home with you from the æsthetic teas in the great city, and you wish not to get out of practice, although nobody may listen to you but a poor country parson."
"I assure you, sir----"
"Never mind, never mind. But when you have lived five years among the rustics-- Do you believe it, I have never been able to induce these people even to buy a bell for the church, although they are bound by law to provide for the house of God? But when they are called upon to provide for a merry-making, or to carry out some worldly purpose, they have always an abundance of money."
"Well," said Oswald, "the nobles of this neighborhood are not exactly famous for their repugnance to merry-making, as you call it."
"The nobles? My dear sir, that is a very different thing. Their device is and must be: Live and let live! But, you know, the same thing does not suit all."
"And many things are not suitable for anybody," added Oswald.