No one paid
any attention to him now. They were all yelling and debating hotly
with one another.
"You cannot get them to strike!" said Rybin, coming up to Pavel.
"Greedy as these people are for a penny, they are too cowardly.
You may, perhaps, induce about three hundred of them to follow you,
no more. It's a heap of dung you won't lift with one toss of the
pitchfork, I tell you!"
Pavel was silent. In front of him the huge black face of the crowd
was rocking wildly, and fixed on him an importunate stare. His
heart beat in alarm. It seemed to him as if all the words he had
spoken vanished in the crowd without leaving any trace, like
scattered drops of rain falling on parched soil. One after the
other, workmen approached him praising his speech, but doubting the
success of a strike, and complaining how little the people
understood their own interests and realized their own strength.
Pavel had a sense of injury and disappointment as to his own power.
His head ached; he felt desolate. Hitherto, whenever he pictured
the triumph of his truth, he wanted to cry with the delight that
seized his heart. But here he had spoken his truth to the people,
and behold! when clothed in words it appeared so pale, so powerless,
so incapable of affecting anyone.
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