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At one of the railway stations my train passed an extra train which was taking a troop of soldiers under the conduct of the governor of the province, together with muskets, cartridges, and rods, to flog and murder these same famishing peasants.
The peasants are rude, dirty in their habits, and mistrustful; but the thought that our labours are not thrown away makes all that scarcely noticeable.
This was at a small station, on the platform of which stood peasants with big baskets of garlanded flowers and evergreens. They put them on the train, and soon both Marco and The Rat saw that something unusual was taking place. At one time, a man standing on the narrow outside platform of the carriage was plainly seen to be securing garlands and handing up flags to men who worked on the roof.
We should have to issue warrants for at least twenty persons and arrest them; but I know these peasants, and so do these gentlemen; you might keep them a year in prison and you would get nothing out of them but denials. What could you do with all those who were at Tonsard's?"
"May the devil take the lot of you," I cried, "if I believe a single word of all this." But the shots rang out louder and for half an hour the fighting was most desperate. Our band amounted to twenty-four all told, and the enemy were fifty soldiers in addition to a score of peasants.
As long as Gregory remained in their midst, the Brethren held true to him as their leader. He had not, says Gindely, a single trace of personal ambition in his nature; and, though he might have become a Bishop, he remained a layman to the end. Of the Brethren who settled in the valley of Kunwald the greater number were country peasants and tradesmen of humble rank.
For all these evils Russia has a cure; her autocracy saves her from the profitless wrangling of Parliaments; her national Church sums up the beliefs and traditions of nobles and peasants; and at the base of her social system she possesses in the "Mir" a patriarchal communism against which the forces of the West will beat in vain.
Next to these grandees came the smaller landholders, composing the second and more numerous class of the Arabs; then the great mass of the inhabitants, who had sunk into the state of absolute helots. These last were hired peasants or fellahs who cultivated the land, and lived in abject poverty.
Among them were a few men in the uniform of one of the Irish cavalry regiments. This was some alleviation to my terrible anxiety. Had the assailants been a body of peasants, I should have feared that they had wreaked on you and Claire the hatred which they feel, I own not unjustly, towards the king's foreign troops.
Ere I am five kilometres from Tatar Bazardjik the rain begins to descend, and there is neither house nor other shelter visible anywhere ahead. The peasants' villages are all on the river, and the road leads for mile after mile through fields of wheat and rye.
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