The Progressionists, and Angela. Part 10

said another fellow roughly. "Hans Shund is a free-spirited, clever, first-cla.s.s, distinguished man. Taken altogether, he is a liberal man.

For this reason he will be elected councilman to-morrow, then mayor of the city, and finally member of the a.s.sembly."

"That's so, that's so, my partner is right," confirmed Koenig. "But listen, Flachsen, you will agree that formerly--you know, formerly--he was an arrant scoundrel."

"Why was he? Why?" inquired Flachsen.

"Why? Ha, ha! I say, Flachsen, go to Shund's wife, she can tell you best. Go to those whom he has reduced to beggary, for instance, to Holt over there. They all can tell you what Shund is, or rather what he has been. But don't get mad, brother Flachsen! Spite of all that, I shall vote for Shund. That's settled." And he poured the contents of his beer-pot down his throat.

"As you gentlemen are strangers, I will undertake to explain this business for you," said Flachsen, who evidently was an agent for the lower cla.s.ses, and who did his best to put on an appearance of learning by affecting high-sounding words of foreign origin.

"Shund is quite a rational man, learned and full of intelligence. But the priests have calumniated him horribly because he will not howl with them. For this reason we intend to elect him, not for the sake of the free beer. When Shund will have been elected, a system of economy will be inaugurated, taxes will be removed, and the encyclical letter with which the Pope has tried to stultify the people, together with the syllabus, will be sent to the dogs. And in the legislative a.s.sembly the liberal-minded Shund will manage to have the priests excluded from the schools, and we will have none but secular schools. In short, the dismal rule of the priesthood that would like to keep the people in leading-strings will be put an end to, and liberal views will control our affairs. As for Shund's doings outside of legitimate wedlock, that is one of the boons of liberty--it is a right of humanity; and when Koenig lets loose against Shund's money speculations, he is only talking so much bigoted nonsense."

Flachsen's apologetic discourse was interrupted by a row that took place at the next table. There sat a victim of Shund's usury, the land-cultivator Holt. He drank no beer, but wine, to dispel gloomy thoughts and the temptations of desperation. It had cost him no ordinary struggle to listen quietly to eulogies pa.s.sed on Shund. He had maintained silence, and had at times smiled a very peculiar smile. His bruised heart must have suffered a fearful contraction as he heard men sounding the praises of a wretch whom he knew to be wicked and devoid of conscience. For a long time he succeeded in restraining himself. But the wine he had drunk at last fanned his smouldering pa.s.sion into a hot flame of rage, and, clenching his fist, he struck the table violently.

"The fellow whom you extol is a scoundrel!" cried he.

"Who is a scoundrel?" roared several voices.

"Your man, your councilman, your mayor, is a scoundrel! Shund is a scoundrel!" cried the ruined countryman pa.s.sionately.

"And you, Holt, are a fool!"

"You are drunk, Holt!"

"Holt is an a.s.s," 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 superst.i.tion, 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 a.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sembly 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."

"Hold, Flachsen, hold! _I_ am not the man that is paid; you are the one that is paid," retorted the countryman indignantly. "My mouth has not been honey-fed like yours. Nor do I drink your election beer or eat your election sausages. But with my last breath I will maintain that Shund is a scoundrel, a usurer, a villain."

"Out with the fellow!" cried Flachsen. "He has insulted us all, for we have all been drinking election beer. Out with the helot of the priests!"

The progressionist mob fell upon the unhappy man, throttled him, beat him, and drove him into the street.

"Let us leave this den of cutthroats," said Gerlach, rising.

Outside they found Holt leaning against a wall, wiping the blood from his face. Seraphin approached him. "Are you badly hurt, my good man?"

asked he kindly. The wounded man, looking up, saw a n.o.ble countenance before him, and, whilst he continued to gaze hard at Seraphin's fine features, tears began to roll from his eyes.

"O G.o.d! O G.o.d!" sighed he, and then relapsed into silence. But in the tone of his words could be noticed the terrible agony he was suffering.

"Is the wound deep--is it dangerous?" asked the young man.

"No, sir, no! The wound on my forehead is nothing--signifies nothing; but in here," pointing to his breast--"in here are care, anxiety, despair. I am thankful, sir, for your sympathy; it is soothing. But you may go your way; the blows signify nothing."

CHAPTER V.

Gerlach whispered something to the banker. Holt pressed his pocket-handkerchief to the wound.

"Please yourself!" said the banker loudly, in a business tone. Seraphin again approached the beaten man.

"Will you please, my good man, to accompany us?"

"What for, sir?"

"Because I would like to do something towards healing up your wound; I mean the wound in there."

Holt stood motionless before the stranger, and looked at him.

"I thank you, sir; there is no remedy for me; I am doomed!"

"Still, I will a.s.sist you. Follow me."

"Who are you, sir, if I may ask the question?"

"I am a man whom Providence seems to have chosen to rescue the prey from the jaws of a usurer. Come along with us, and fear nothing."

"Very well, I will go in the name of G.o.d! I do not precisely know your object, and you are a stranger to me. But your countenance looks innocent and kind, therefore I will go with you."

They pa.s.sed through alleys and streets.

"Do you often visit that tavern?" inquired Seraphin.

"Not six times in a year," answered Holt. "Sometimes of a Sunday I drink half a gla.s.s of wine, that's all. I am poor, and have to be saving. I would not have gone to the tavern to-day but that I wanted to get rid of my feelings of misery."

"I overheard your story," rejoined Seraphin. "Shund's treatment of you was inhuman. He behaved towards you like a trickish devil."

"That he did! And I am ruined together with my family," replied the poor man dejectedly.

"Take my advice, and never abuse Shund. You know how respectable he has suddenly got to be, how many influential friends he has. You can easily perceive that one cannot say anything unfavorable of such a man without great risk, no matter were it true ten times over."

"I am not given to disputing," replied Holt. "But it stirred the bile within me to hear him extolled, and it broke out. Oh! I have learned to suffer in silence. I haven't time to think of other matters. After G.o.d, my business and my family were my only care. I attended to my occupation faithfully and quietly as long as I had any to attend to, but now I haven't any to take care of. O G.o.d! it is hard. It will bring me to the grave."