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 passed 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 passion 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 passionately.

"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 l