The country folk could see for themselves the soldiery hastening on its way through the land to the frontiers; every carter, tramp, and traveller, brought news of the military cordons which were drawn far and wide, from town to town, and required every person passing to and fro to show his passport, a very unusual institution in those days.
The wiser and better informed persons quieted the whisperers by explaining that these measures were not adopted against any foreign foe, but were simply taken to prevent the spread of the terrible pestilence which was already raging beyond the limits of the kingdom.
And then a still more terrible rumour began to raise aloft its dragon-like head.
It was generally said, muttered, whispered, and at last proclaimed aloud, that it was no pestilence the people had to fear, but that the gentry themselves who had resolved to exterminate the common-folks!
They had determined to exterminate them in an execrable horrible way—by poison! They were casting into the barns, the wells, and the vats of the pot-house a deadly poison of swift operation-that was the way in which they meant to destroy the people.
The doctors, apothecaries, and innkeepers had all been corrupted; everyone with short cropped hair; everyone who wore a cloth coat was to be regarded as an enemy; nobody was to be trusted!
Who spread this terrible rumour?—spread it first of all in secret, in mysterious whispers from house to house, but presently proclaimed it in the public thoroughfares with a loud voice and amidst the clash of arms? Ah! who can say? So much only is certain that the tissues of this network of calumny spread far and wide. It is possible to make human weakness, ignorance, and rustic stupidity believe almost anything. The severity of the gentry in the past had, no doubt, contributed something to this end; but certainly not much, for, as a matter of fact, the common people raged most furiously against those of the gentry who had done them most good; it was their benefactors they treated the most savagely. And then, too, the usual vices of every community, the love of loot, the thirst for vengeance, blind fury, anger of heart, low greed, were so many additional predisposing causes of the horrors that followed.
Yet a red thread ran all through this woof of sorrow and mourning; "blind destiny," upon whom man so cheerfully casts the burden of his sins, had but little to do with it at all.
It was after vespers, and Thomas Bodza was taking a walk across the fields. This was his usual promenade. Sometimes he went as far as the boundaries of the neighbouring village with a little book under his arm which he perused with philosophic tranquility.