like the cork going off, so to speak, for us poor people when you went
away; everything went flat. If anything happens, it doesn't do for a
poor devil to look on; and every time any one wants to complain, he gets
a voting-paper pushed into his hand and they say: Go and vote and things
will be altered! But confound it, that can't rouse a fellow who's not
learnt anything from the time he was small. They'd taken a lot of
trouble about me now--whitewashing me so that I could use my right to
vote; but they can't make me so that no one looks down on me. And so I
say, Thank you for nothing! But if you still believe in it, so will I,
for I've got faith in you. Here's my hand on it!"

Jacob was the same simple, good-hearted fellow that he had been in
former days when he lived in the attic in the "Ark." There might very
well have been a little more evil in him. But his words warmed Pelle's
heart. Here was some one who needed him, and who still believed in him
although he had been maimed in the fight. He was the first of the
disabled ones, and Pelle was prepared to meet with more and to hear
their accusations. Many of them would turn against him now that he was
powerless, but he would have to put up with that. He felt as though he
had the strength for it now.

Pelle went into the street again, letting his feet carry him where they
would, while he thought of the past and the future. They had been so
certain that a new age would dawn upon them at once! The new, great
truth had been so self-evident that it seemed as if all the old
conditions must fall before it as at a magic word; and now the everyday
reality had worn the gloss off it. As far as he could see, nothing
particular had happened, and what was there to happen? That was not the
way to overturn systems. From Merry Jacob's opinion he could draw his
own, but he was no longer despondent, he did not mind what happened. He