This again put her firmly on her
feet; more composed than forceful, straining herself to her utmost,
and feeling how agitated pride grew in her raising her high above
the people, how subdued joy flamed up in her, she spoke, snatching
bundles of papers from the valise and throwing them right and left
into some person's quick, greedy hands.
"For this they sentenced my son and all with him. Do you know? I
will tell you, and you believe the heart of a mother; believe her
gray hair. Yesterday they sentenced them because they carried to
you, to all the people, the honest, sacred truth. How do you live?"
The crowd grew silent in amazement, and noiselessly increased in
size, pressing closer and closer together, surrounding the woman
with a ring of living bodies.
"Poverty, hunger, and sickness--that's what work gives to the poor
people. This order of things pushes us to theft and to corruption;
and over us, satiated and calm, live the rich. In order that we
should obey the police, the authorities, the soldiers, all are in
their hands, all are against us, everything is against us. We
perish all our lives day after day in toil, always in filth, in
deceit.
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