“Jawor people,” yelled the man in the patched jerkin, “I see you’re letting them spit in your broth and push you around! Have you people so lost heart? Your fathers gave the Jews a little pogrom in 1420 and you should have finished them off, shouldn’t have left any alive! But what do you do? They’re poisoning your wells and you sit and sip beer? What else will you let the damned Jews do? Steal the Host from the church and defile it like they did in Bautzen? Allow them to draw your children’s blood like in Zgorzelec?”

“Or perhaps,” said another, with hair as curly as a ram’s fleece, standing up, “you’ll wait for the Hussites to come and for the Jews to open the gates for them, like they did in Frankenstein last year? What, didn’t you know? You perhaps don’t know either that the Israelites planned to turn Kłodzko over for the Hussites to sack by starting a fire in the town. Don’t you know that Juda has been in cahoots with the Czech heretic from time immemorial? Didn’t your priest tell you that in his sermons? That there’s a conspiracy of Satan, the Jew and the Hussite? What? He didn’t? Then take a closer look at your shepherd, Jawor folk. Watch what he does, listen out for what he says. There are plenty of apostates among the clergy, too, plenty of them have succumbed to Satan’s instigation! If you think something’s not right with your priest, inform on him! Inform your lords at once!”

More and more locals were getting up and darting stealthily towards the exit. The faces of those who remained weren’t betraying undue enthusiasm.

The speakers noticed it.

“You’re cowards and beggars!” shouted the man in the patched jerkin. “We ought to be informing on you! For if a man isn’t against the Jews, he’s clearly in league with the Devil and is just like a Jew! Jews, I say, have yielded to evil powers! The enemy hand of Juda draws the Christian away from the true faith. Would there have been Huss without the Jew? Who, if not the Jew, following the Devil’s instigation, incited the Czechs to heresy? For the filthy Hussite sect models itself on nothing other than the Talmud! And is grounded in the Kabbalah!”

“After Satan,” echoed the curly-haired man, “Christians have no greater enemy than the Jews. In their revolting daily prayers, they solicit our destruction, they curse us, they use their magical rites and exhortations to beg Satan, their father and God, to wipe us out. A century ago, they tried to destroy us with the Black Death. They failed; Christ proved to be stronger. And now they have brought forth the Hussites. To bring about the doom of us, Christians!”