Page:Vorse--The ninth man.djvu/42

 And in this day and the days which followed I had heard enough of such rumors to sicken me, until revenge for injuries to wipe off old hate seemed to me a clean passion. Then whisperings in corners began, while the braggadocio fellows openly showed their black ballots and talked of what they would do with them.

The people became quiet, but there was a tenseness to the whole town, like the drawing of a bow across strings taut to the breaking-point. As the fury of a crowd is worse than the fury of one man, so much more was San Moglio terrible, the whole of it aquiver with its desirous revenge, men and women locking within themselves some secret hate, until the sum of their hates made a whole so dark and sinister that it seemed to me my fair city had become a hell, and I cried out to Mazzaleone:

"What have you done to us?"

"I only set the men's feet keeping step to the time of Death," said he; "the tramping of many feet to one rhythm, or the beating of many hearts to one love or one hate, is more terrible or more beautiful than any other thing, Matteo."