“And you, Holt, are a fool!”
“You are drunk, Holt!”
“Holt is an ass,” maintained Flachsen. “He cannot read, otherwise he would have seen in the Evening Gazette that Shund is a man of honor, a friend of the people, a progressive man, a liberal man, a brilliant genius, a despiser of religion, a death-dealer to superstition, a—a—I don’t remember what all besides. Had you read all that in the evening paper, you fool, you wouldn’t presume to open your foul mouth against a man of honor like Hans Shund. Yes, stare; if you had read the evening paper, you would have seen the enumeration of the great qualities and deeds of Hans Shund in black and white.”
“The evening paper, indeed!” cried Holt contemptuously. “Does the evening paper also mention how Shund brought about the ruin of the father of a family of eight children?”
“What’s that you say, you dog?” yelled a furious fellow. “That’s a lie against Shund!”
“Easy, Graeulich, easy,” replied Holt to the last speaker, who was about to set upon him. “It is not a lie, for I am the man whom Shund has strangled with his usurer’s clutches. He has reduced me to beggary—me and my wife and my children.”
Graeulich lowered his fists, for Holt spoke so convincingly, and the anguish in his face appealed so touchingly, that the man’s fury was in an instant changed to sympathy. Holt had stood up. He related at length the wily and unscrupulous proceedings through which he had been brought to ruin. The company listened to his story, many nodded in token of sympathy, for everybody was acquainted with the ways of the hero of the day.
“That’s the way Shund has made a beggar of me,” concluded Holt. “And I am not the only one, you know it well. If, then, I call Shund a usurer, a scoundrel, a villain, you cannot help agreeing with me.”
Flachsen noticed with alarm that the feeling of the company was becoming hostile to his cause. He approached the table, where he was met by perplexed looks from his aids.
“Don’t you perceive,” cried he, “that Holt is a hireling of the priests? Will you permit yourselves to be imposed upon by this salaried slave? Hear me, you scapegrace, you rascal, you ass, listen to what I have to tell you! Hans Shund is the lion of the day—the greatest man of this century! Hans Shund is greater than Bismarck, sharper than Napoleon. Out of nothing God made the universe: from nothing Hans Shund has got to be a rich man. Shund has a mouthpiece that moves like a mill-wheel on which entire streams fall. In the assembly Shund will talk down all opposition. He will talk even better than that fellow Voelk, over in Bavaria, who is merely a lawyer, but talks upon everything, even things he knows nothing about. And do you, lousy beggar, presume to malign a man of this kind? If you open that filthy mouth of yours once more, I will stop it for you with paving-stones.”