Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/101

 Rh foreign-looking hexameters, became very popular. In this he made use of a well-known French story which, in accordance with the new revolutionary ideas, sided with the serf against the lord. Two or three decades after Fazekas, Claude Tillier employed the same story in his humorous novel: Mon oncle Benjamin. A heartless landowner robs, with violence, a young peasant, takes his geese and sends them to market, and has the lad flogged. The peasant determines to pay back this flogging three-fold, and does so. First he disguises himself as a wood-cutter and induces the nobleman to follow him into the wood to select timber, and there flogs him. Next he gains admittance to his room as an itinerant physician and flogs him a second time. After this the nobleman does not dare to go anywhere without his attendants, but on one occasion a man whom he meets tells him that he could help him to capture the wicked peasant if the attendants were sent to a certain place which he points out. They accordingly go, leaving their master alone, when the man throws off his disguise and flogs the nobleman for the third time. The peasant's revenge has a moral effect. The heartless landowner confesses his fault and amends his ways.