'Why, yes; I myself and everyone saw Bartek Słowik vote for Schulberg.'
'Bartek Słowik?' the lady said.
'Why, yes. The others are at him now for it. The man is rolling on the ground, howling, and his wife is scolding him. But I myself saw how he voted.'
'From such an enlightened village!' the neighbour from Mizerów said.
'You see, Sir,' Maciej said, 'others who were in the war also voted as he did. They say that they were ordered—'
'That's cheating, pure cheating!—The election is void—Compulsion!—Swindling!' cried different voices.
The dinner at the Pognębin manor house was not cheerful that day.
The host and hostess left in the evening, but not as yet for Berlin, only for Dresden.
Meanwhile Bartek sat in his cottage, miserable, sworn at, ill-treated and hated, a stranger even to his own wife, for even she had not spoken a word to him all day.
In the autumn God granted a crop, and Herr Just, who had just come into possession of Bartek's farm, felt pleased, for he had not done at all a bad stroke of business.