'You would dare to cut the squire's hay?'
'How is it his? Has he sown the grass? or is the field near his house?'
'Don't you see, silly, that the meadow is his just as well as his other fields?'
'They are his, so long as no one takes them. Our land and our house were his once, now they are yours. Why should he be better off than we are? He does nothing, yet he has enough land for a hundred peasants.'
'He has it because he has it, because he is a gentleman.'
'Pooh! If you wore a coat, and your trousers outside your boots, you would be a gentleman; but for all that you wouldn't have the land.'
'You are stupid,' said Slimak, getting angry.
'I know I am stupid, that is because I can't read or write, but Jasiek Gryb can, and therefore he is clever, and he says there must be equality, and there will be when the peasants have taken the land from the nobility.'
'Jasiek had better leave off taking money from his father's chest before he disposes of other people's property! He might give mine to Maciek and take the squire's for himself, but he would never give his own away. Let it be as God has ordered.'
'Did God give the land to the squire?'