"If these people should rise they will not leave one stone upon another," the headsman's apprentice was saying.
"And do you suppose they will rise up because you tell them to?"
"I have thought the matter well out. The common folks about here do not love their masters, there is no reason why they should. Their lords have kicked and cuffed and spat upon them, and treated them worse than dogs. You have but to cast a burning fagot into the mass of discontent, and it will flame up at once. Even the wisest among them who do know something about it, are the most narrow-minded. If there be two versions of a matter they always believe the most absurd one. I told them to be on their guard against danger. I told them to look after their wells and their granaries, as their masters wanted to poison them. When they asked why? I told them that the whole kingdom was surrounded on every side by enemies, and the gentry wanted to raise a pestilence in the kingdom to keep the enemy out of it. At my words the common people at once became suspicious, for they have heard for a long time that the gentry were expecting a pestilence, and as this was the first explanation of the prophesied epidemic that had come to their ears, they believed it at once. Suspicion is contagious. And as the gentry have since had the imprudence to order a separate graveyard to be dug for the corpses of those who may die of the cholera (naturally in order to prevent the dead bodies from spreading the contagion), the common folks have believed my words as if I were a prophet, and quite expect that the gentry are going to poison the poor people. The digging of the churchyard they take to be a first move in that direction."
"Devilish clever of you, Ivan, I must say."
"And then don't forget the announcement of the Kassa doctors to the effect that if the common folks will not take the salutary bismuth powder voluntarily, it must be forced upon them, thrown into their wells and scattered about their barns. It looks as if everyone was intent upon playing into our hands."
"Does the young chap upstairs suspect anything?"
"I don't think so, but let us speak in a lower tone. I promised to hide him here. He fancies he has shot his captain dead. He caught him with his sweetheart and banged away at him; the man fell to the ground, but he did not die. But the young fellow ran away and deserted his colours. I have been persuading him to desert for a long time, as I had need of him. This, in fact, is the third time he has deserted, and if they catch him now they will undoubtedly string him up. Not a bad idea for him to fly to the headsman's house, eh? They will seek him everywhere but under the gallows-tree. And if they find him here, they won't have very much more trouble with him, that's all."
"Ho, ho, ho! Suppose he were to hear you?"
And he did hear!
"You see, this was my object all along. I shall put his pursuers on his track in any case, and they will capture him here and take him to Hétfalu, where the court-martial will pronounce sentence of death, and then have him exposed in the pillory. All the common folk about Hétfalu love the youth as if he was their own son, but they hate his father like the devil. It will be no very great masterpiece to stir up the people in these troublous times, and when they see the young fellow led out to be hanged they will be quite ready to seize their scythes and dung-forks, set him free, raise him on their shoulders, and rush with him to the castle of his father (who, by the way, has done his best to hound his son to death), and level it with the ground, and there you have a peasant revolt in full swing straight off."