Modlica is a neighboring farming village whose cultivated fields make it a vivid measure of Lipce’s hardship. In the surrounding countryside, ploughs turn the earth, peasants sow and plant potatoes, and work can be heard across village boundaries; against this active landscape, Lipce’s nearly fallow fields appear strikingly abandoned. Modlica’s importance lies less in a single episode than in this repeated contrast: its agricultural competence and seasonal progress show what Lipce cannot accomplish while its labor is depleted.

Setting and Agricultural Work

Modlica appears among the villages visible beyond Lipce’s boundary mounds. Its orchards and white walls show through the bluish air, while shouts, singing, and the noise of work carry across the fields. The landscape is not presented as empty countryside: peasants sow, ploughs till, and people plant potatoes, with dust rising behind harrows on the sandy ground. This broader panorama makes village labor perceptible across distances, connecting separate settlements through a shared agricultural rhythm.

The contrast becomes more severe when the narration turns back to Lipce. There, the fields lie in numb silence, almost fallow, while women labor from dawn until night. Their hands cannot make up for the absence of even ten peasants. The comparison with active neighboring villages, including Modlica, gives that shortfall visible consequences: work continues elsewhere across the same rural landscape, but Lipce cannot bring its land into comparable use. Modlica therefore serves as a practical counterpoint, not simply a place-name in the view.

Farming Reputation and Seasonal Timing

A conversation about the fields describes the people of Modlica as good farmers who work in the manor’s manner. That comparison identifies their farming as notably disciplined or accomplished, while also tying their methods to the manor as a recognizable agricultural model. The remark belongs to a discussion of uneven crops: one speaker notes that barley has emerged evenly, whereas Lipce’s oats and barley show little sign of growth. The explanation points to late sowing and rain that flattened the crops. Modlica’s reputation thus becomes part of a concrete contrast in cultivation and results, rather than an abstract judgment about character.

The difference also appears in the timing of harvest. During a conversation with the squire, someone observes that rye is already being cut at Modlica. Its sandy ground is offered as part of the explanation for the crop’s earlier progress, alongside the broader observation that rye has come up faster everywhere that year. These details place Modlica within a seasonal calendar: sowing, growth, and cutting do not happen uniformly across the region, and soil conditions help determine the pace. The village’s early harvest is evidence of that local variation, not proof that every field or year follows the same pattern.

People and Household Connections

Modlica also enters conversation through an unnamed person who is said to be with a farmer there. The exchange concerns the upbringing of that person and Witek: a speaker argues that both were taken in very young and raised in a household, with Witek arriving as an infant still clutching his shirt between his teeth. The reference gives Modlica a modest social connection beyond its fields, linking the village to the movement of people into farm households. The passage does not identify the other person or establish that they were born in Modlica; it locates their current association with a farmer there.

This passing reference also sits within a discussion of economic need. One speaker resists being understood as defending Kozłowa, but argues that a woman without anything to put in the pot must find a way to earn a living. The mention of a farmer at Modlica belongs to that practical world of household dependence and work. The evidence does not make Modlica the cause or solution to the hardship being discussed, but shows how its farms can figure in accounts of where people are taken in or employed.

A Distinct Village in the Wider Community

Modlica is also recognizable as a separate community when more than two hundred peasants gather for a school vote at the prefect’s behest. At first, attendees stand in groups organized by village, and observers can distinguish people from Lipce, Modlica, Przyłęk, and Rzepki by their different styles of dress. Their clothing makes village affiliation visible in a crowd before the gathering’s political business begins.

That arrangement changes when news spreads that they must vote for a school. People cross between village groups and associate more freely, while the Rzepki gentry remain apart. The account preserves both scales of rural identity: Modlica is distinct enough to be recognized by its people’s dress, yet its representatives become part of a larger assembly when a shared decision is at stake. The scene broadens the portrait of the village beyond farm work without assigning the meeting to Modlica itself. Across the agricultural comparisons and the public gathering, Modlica remains a neighboring community with its own identity, connected to Lipce by labor, household ties, and common village affairs.