"But misfortune may return."
"No, no, no, it will not return! ... or if it does it will break against my fists, against the factory, the insurance, the police ... and above all against my money...."
It was late when the friends parted.
"What a fool Martin is!" thought Adler; "he means to frighten me."
The pastor, driving home in his little cart and looking upwards to the starlit sky, asked anxiously: "Which of the waves will return?" The comparison had come into his head unexpectedly, and he looked upon it as a sort of revelation. He believed firmly that the wave of wrong would turn; but when? ... which of them would it be?...
Chapter VI
Generally, good or bad actions only assume their proper significance in people's opinion when they are reported in print. It had been known for a long time that old Adler was an egoist and a sweater, and his son an egoist and a debauchee. But public opinion had not been raised against them before the articles on Gosławski's death had been published. After that the whole neighbourhood became interested in what was going on at the mill. Everybody knew the extent of Ferdinand's debts, the sums which old Adler sweated out of his workmen by reducing their pay, etc. Gosławski was considered to have been a victim of the father's greed and the son's debauchery.
Public opinion made itself felt in people's relations to Ferdinand. A few young men had cut him dead at the request of their parents; others preserved only the outward forms of politeness. Even from the friends that stuck to him, and these were not of the best sort, he often heard remarks which sounded like a provocation.
Nor was this all. In hotels and restaurants, wineshops and cafés, though they had made much money out of Ferdinand, newspapers containing correspondence about Gosławski's death were purposely put on his table; and when, surrounded by his friends, he once called for wine and wished to know if a good kind of red wine were to be had, he got the answer:
"Yes, sir, red as blood."