PEASANT. But how can one do without it? We didn't start the custom, and it's not for us to stop it.... There are the Church feasts, and weddings, and memorial feasts, and bargains to be wetted with a drink.... Whether one likes it or not, one can't get on without it. It's the custom!
TRAVELLER. But there are people who never drink, and yet they manage to live! After all, there's not much good in it.
PEASANT. No good at all! Only evil!
TRAVELLER. Then one ought not to drink.
PEASANT. Well, anyhow, drink or no drink, we've nothing to live on! We've not enough land. If we had land we could at least live ... but there's none to be had.
TRAVELLER. No land to be had? Why, isn't there plenty of land? Wherever one looks, one sees land!
PEASANT. There's land, right enough, but it's not ours. Your elbow's not far from your mouth, but just you try to bite it!
TRAVELLER. Not yours! Whose is it, then?
PEASANT. Whose?... Whose, indeed! There's that fat-bellied devil over there ... he's seized 5000 acres. He has no family, but he's never satisfied, while we've had to give up keeping fowls—there's nowhere for them to run about! It's nearly time for us to stop keeping cattle, too ... we've no fodder for them; and if a calf, or maybe a horse, happens to stray into his field, we have to pay fines and give him our last farthing.
TRAVELLER. What does he want all that land for?