"Exactly, exactly! But for that I shall not require any gratitude. We can, after all, change the subject. Sit down, Sir Third-class Agent. What is new? How is His Majesty, the king."
"What king?"
"Why the one you serve and who to-day has the most courtiers; the one who, most of all, cannot endure the truth and most easily gulps adulation; the one, who in winter smells of whiskey and in summer of sour sweat,--that mangy, lousy, scabby, stinking, gracious, or rather, ungracious ruler of the day. King Rabble."
If Laskowicz had heard the most monstrous blasphemies against a holy object, which heretofore mankind venerated, he would not have been more horrified than at the words which passed Swidwicki's lips. For him it was as if he were struck on the head with a club, for it never crossed his mind that any one would have dared to utter anything like that. His eyes became dim, his jaws tightened convulsively, his hands began to tremble. In the first moments he was possessed by an irrepressible desire to shoot Swidwicki in the head with the revolver he carried with him and afterwards slam the door and go wherever his eyes would take him, or else to place the barrel to his ear and shatter his own head, but he lacked the strength. All night long he had toiled in the printing plant; after which he had fled over the roofs and through the streets like a wild animal. He was fatigued, hungry, and exhausted with the frightful experiences of that morning. So he suddenly staggered on his feet, became as pale as a corpse, and would have tumbled upon the ground if a chair had not stood close by, into which he sank heavily, as if dead.
"What is this? What in the devil ails you?" asked Swidwicki.
And he began to assist him. He poured out of a bottle the remainder of the cognac and forced him to drink it; afterwards he lifted him from the chair and led him to another room and almost forcibly put him in his own bed.
"What the devil!" he repeated; "how do you feel?"
"Better," answered Laskowicz.
Swidwicki glanced at his watch.
"In about ten minutes, the old woman who serves here ought to come. I will order her to bring something to eat. In the meanwhile lie quietly."