"Do all of you go away."
Whereupon the crowd began to depart, the big peasant saying as he went:
"There! Just as I foretold has the matter turned out. Conscience HAS asserted itself."
Yet the words were spoken without self-complacency, rather, thoughtfully, and with a sense of awe.
As for the red-nosed old man who was walking like a shadow behind the last speaker, he opened his snuff-box, peered therein with his moist eyes, and drawled to no one in particular:
"How often does one see a man play with conscience, yes, even though he be a rogue! He erects that conscience as a screen to his knaveries and tricks and wiles, and masks the whole with a cloud of words. Yes, we know how it is done, even though folk may stare at him, and say to one another, 'How fervently his soul is glowing!' Aye, all the time that he is holding his hand to his heart he will be dipping the other hand into your pocket."
The lover of proverbs, for his part, unbuttoned his jacket, thrust his hands under his coat-tails, and said in a loud voice:
"There is a saying that you can trust any wild beast, such as a fox or a hedgehog or a toad, but not—"
"Quite so, dear sir. The common folk are exceedingly degenerate."
"Well, they are not developing as they ought to do."