"You must not talk like that!" cried tailor Wimmersdorf, "that is all nonsense!"
"If tailor Wimmersdorf considers my speech nonsense," said Bräsig, "he can stop his ears, for all I care; he is much too stupid for me to notice; and now he can go and complain of me if he likes, I am Inspector Bräsig."
"You are right! Go on!" cried the people.
"Fellow-citizens, I should have said nothing at all, for I hold it for a very unsuitable thing, in an agriculturist or any other man, to stir up the laborers against their master; but when such a--" "Great Mogul," interposed Schultz,--"stands up on this altar of fraternity to deceive this Reform with lies, and glorify himself, and make false representations of the happiness of his laborers, then I will speak out. Fellow-citizens! my name is Inspector Zachary Bräsig."
"Bravo! bravo!"
"The Herr Zamwell Pomuchelskopp has told you that there is no poverty to be found in the country, he has regulated all the conditions of the day-laborer so wisely--bonus! as our honored Herr President Rein says; but, fellow-citizens, these day-laborers' conditions are something like roast beef and plum pudding; they are very nice, but we can't get them. For example, and merely præter propter, take the houses! Close by Gurlitz is a sort of pig-pen, which passes for a house, and Willgans lives there,--is Willgans here?"
Willgans was not there.
"No matter. The roof has not been mended these three years, and the rain runs in overhead, and when there is a hard storm, the living-room is flooded, and the poor little children must wade round like frogs, while their father and mother are away at work, and when he complained about it Herr Pomuchelskopp said his name was Willgans (Wild-goose), and water was suitable for geese."
"Fie! fie! He ought not to say that!"
"And now about the free pasturage, and the hay for the cow! Where is the pasturage? Half a mile from the village, on the out-field, where nothing grows but goat's-beard, and among the fir-trees, and can the women go back and forth three times a day to milk? Well they don't need to go so often as that, for eighteen laborers, out of the one and twenty, have lost their cows, from one complaint or another, and the three that are left are real dancing-masters."