"I mean if the Netzig people believe such a thing, it must be a common occurrence amongst them, and therefore it doesn't matter."
"Soft words butter no parsnips," said Guste decisively. Diederich then felt it his duty to enter a protest.
"To err is human, but nobody can defy public opinion with impunity."
"He always thinks he is too good for this world," said Guste. And Diederich: "These are stern times. He who does not refute a charge must believe in it." Then Guste cried, full of painful enthusiasm:
"Dr. Hessling is not like you! He defended me. I have proof, I know it, from Meta Harnisch, because in the end she had to tell me what she knew. He was the only person of them all who took my defence. He, in your place, would let the people know what he thought of them, when they dared to gossip about me!"
Diederich nodded his head in approval, but Buck kept twisting his glass and looking at his reflection in it. Suddenly he put it down.
"How do you know I, too, wouldn't like sometime to give them a piece of my mind—to take one of them, without choosing particularly, for they are all about equally mean and stupid?" As he said this he shut his eyes. Guste shrugged her bare shoulders.
"That's what you say, but they are not so stupid, they know what they want. … The stupider they are the cleverer," she concluded challengingiy, and Diederich nodded ironically. Then Buck looked at him with eyes which suddenly seemed to be those of a madman. His trembling hands convulsively fumbled at his neck; his voice was hoarse. "If I could only—if I only had one of them by the scruff of the neck, and knew that he had started the whole thing, that he embodied in himself all the hateful and evil qualities of the rest; if, if I could get hold of one who was the personification
