He paused and drank half a tumbler of vodka.  His last statement was so obviously inapplicable—­what he actually did see was so very far removed from what he said he saw—­that he decided to relinquish the point.

“I drink,” he cried, “to Liberty and Equality!”

Some of the little fathers also drank, to assuage an hereditary thirst.

“And now,” continued the orator, “let us get to business.  I think we understand each other?”

He looked round with an engaging smile upon faces brutal enough to suit his purpose, but quite devoid of intelligence.  There was not much understanding there.

“The poor man has one only way of making himself felt—­force.  We have worked for generations, we have toiled in silence, and we have gathered strength.  The time has now come for us to put forth our strength.  The time has gone by for merely asking for what we want.  We asked, and they heard us not.  We will now go and take!”

A few who had heard this speech or something like it before shouted their applause at this moment.  Before the noise had subsided the door opened, and two or three men pushed their way into the already overcrowded room.

“Come in, come in!” cried the orator; “the more the better.  You are all welcome.  All we require, then, little fathers, is organization.  There are nine hundred souls in Osterno; are you going to bow down before one man?  All men are equal—­moujik and barin, krestyanin and prince.  Why do you not go up to the castle that frowns down upon the village, and tell the man there that you are starving, that he must feed you, that you are not going to work from dawn till eve while he sits on his velvet couch and smokes his gold-tipped cigarettes.  Why do you not go and tell him that you are not going to starve and die while he eats caviare and peaches from gold plates and dishes?”

A resounding bang of the fist finished this fine oration, and again the questions were unanswered.

“They are all the same, these aristocrats,” the man thundered on.  “Your prince is as the others, I make no doubt.  Indeed, I know; for I have been told by our good friend Abramitch here.  A clever man our friend Abramitch, and when you get your liberty—­when you get your Mir—­you must keep him in mind.  Your prince, then—­this Howard Alexis—­treats you like the dirt beneath his feet.  Is it not so?  He will not listen to your cry of hunger.  He will not give you a few crumbs of food from his gold dishes.  He will not give you a few kopecks of the millions of rubles that he possesses.  And where did he get those rubles?  Ah! where did he get them—­eh?  Tell me that!”

Again the interrogative unwashed fist.  As the orator’s wild and frenzied eye travelled round the room it lighted on a form near the door—­a man standing a head and shoulders above any one in the room, a man enveloped in an old brown coat, with a woollen shawl round his throat, hiding half his face.