Pelle the Conqueror, vol 3 | Page 5

in their
arms and put dry clouts on you when you didn't know enough to ask....
Are you going to use your truncheon on me, too? Wouldn't you like to,
Fredrik? Take your orders from the great folks, and then come yelping
at us, because we aren't fine enough for you!" She was shaking with
rage; her yellowish gray hair had become loosened and was tumbling
about her face; she was a perfect volcano.
The police marched across the Knippel Bridge, escorted by a swarm of
street urchins, who yelled and whistled between their fingers. From
time to time a policeman would turn round; then the whole swarm took
to its heels, but next moment it was there again. The police were
nervous: their fingers were opening and closing in their longing to
strike out. They looked like a party of criminals being escorted to the
court-house by the extreme youth of the town, and the people were
laughing.
Pelle kept step on the pavement. He was in a wayward mood.
Somewhere within him he felt a violent impulse to give way to that
absurd longing to leap into the air and beat his head upon the pavement
which was the lingering result of his illness. But now it assumed the
guise of insolent strength. He saw quite plainly how big Eriksen ran

roaring at the bailiff, and how he was struck to the ground, and
thereafter wandered about an idiot. Then the "Great Power" rose up
before him, mighty in his strength, and was hurled to his death; they
had all been like dogs, ready to fall on him, and to fawn upon
everything that smelt of their superiors and the authorities. And he
himself, Pelle, had had a whipping at the court-house, and people had
pointed the finger at him, just as they pointed at the "Great Power."
"See, there he goes loafing, the scum of humanity!" Yes, he had learned
what righteousness was, and what mischief it did. But now he had
escaped from the old excommunication, and had entered a new world,
where respectable men never turned to look after the police, but left
such things to the street urchins and old women. There was a great
satisfaction in this; and Pelle wanted to take part in this world; he
longed to understand it.
It was Saturday, and there was a crowd of journeymen and
seamstresses in the warehouse, who had come to deliver their work.
The foreman went round as usual, grumbling over the work, and before
he paid for it he would pull at it and crumple it so that it lost its shape,
and then he made the most infernal to-do because it was not good
enough. Now and again he would make a deduction from the week's
wages, averring that the material was ruined; and he was especially
hard on the women, who stood there not daring to contradict him.
People said he cheated all the seamstresses who would not let him have
his way with them.
Pelle stood there boiling with rage. "If he says one word to me, we shall
come to blows!" he thought. But the foreman took the work without
glancing at it--ah, yes, that was from Pipman!
But while he was paying for it a thick-set man came forward out of a
back room; this was the court shoemaker, Meyer himself. He had been
a poor young man with barely a seat to his breeches when he came to
Copenhagen from Germany as a wandering journeyman. He did not
know much about his craft, but he knew how to make others work for
him! He did not answer the respectful greetings of the workers, but
stationed himself before Pelle, his belly bumping against the counter,
wheezing loudly through his nose, and gazing at the young man.
"New man?" he asked, at length. "That's Pipman's assistant," replied the
foreman, smiling. "Ah! Pipman--he knows the trick, eh? You do the

work and he takes the money and drinks it, eh?" The master shoemaker
laughed as at an excellent joke.
Pelle turned red. "I should like to be independent as soon as possible,"
he said.
"Yes, yes, you can talk it over with the foreman; but no unionists here,
mind that! We've no use for those folks."
Pelle pressed his lips together and pushed the cloth wrapper into the
breast of his coat in silence. It was all he could do not to make some
retort; he couldn't approve of that prohibition. He went out quickly into
Kobmager Street and turned out of the Coal Market into Hauser Street,
where, as he knew, the president of the struggling Shoemakers' Union
was living. He found a little cobbler occupying a dark cellar. This must
be the man he sought; so he ran down