"Yes," continued Wangen, "I don't stand so much alone now, thank goodness, as Norby thinks."
"Then he's not so much to be pitied after all," thought the pastor, adding aloud: "Yes, I hear you've started a new working-men's union, and that you've often given lectures there lately."
"Yes," answered Wangen; "a man must be blind if he doesn't see that Norby has a number of rich men behind him, and that the end and aim of this matter is to do away with the eight-hours' working day in this part of the country."
The pastor smiled and said good-bye, and cracked his whip over the bay.
"That was a very unsuccessful visit," thought the pastor, and sighed. "People are only amenable to reason when they are dying; and even then it is in order to gain something."
Wangen had returned to the drawing-room, and stood at the window watching the pastor as he drove away. He could not at once regain his mental equilibrium, for, in spite of everything, the old man had left a good impression upon him, although at the same time this was something he was unwilling to acknowledge; for it might disturb the calculation respecting man's wickedness, to which Wangen daily added fresh amounts, thereby strengthening his righteous anger.
"How strange it is," he thought with some agitation, "that the priests always play into the hands of the rich!" The thought had half unconsciously been admitted, in order to get rid of the good impression. "And they try with texts and solemn faces to make the poor man give up his rights. I dare say!"
As he stood and followed the pastor's sledge with his eyes, he gradually let loose a whole series of such reflections, and little by little felt the irritation that made him believe in what he said; and little by little the old pastor driving along the road seemed to him to be a theological messenger in the service of wealth, like so many other priests in this world.
"Has there ever been an affair too rotten for some priest or other to lend himself, his God, and his church in defence of it? Look at war, for instance! And the doctrine of eternal punishment! A nice thing indeed!"
Wangen had nothing to do all day now, so he was always busy with this affair with Norby, and it grew and grew in his imagination. At the same time he constantly had to witness fresh sad consequences of his failure. If he only met the old tailor who had entrusted his small savings to him, he involuntarily went another way; for he thought the tailor stared at him with wild eyes.