"Father," Paul cried in a pained tone, "do not be blasphemous. Wladimir was divinely inspired to dower his country with the true faith. Just therein lay the wisdom of Providence in achieving such great results through the medium of an individual. It is impossible that God should have permitted him to incline his ear to the infidel Israelite, who has survived to be at once a link with the past and a living proof of the sterility of the soul that refuses the living waters. The millions of holy Russia perpetuating the stubborn heresy of the Jews--adopting an unfaith as a faith! The very thought makes the blood run cold. Nay, then would every Russian deserve to be sunk in squalor, dishonesty, and rapacity, even as every Jew." "Not every Jew, Paul," I remonstrated. "No, not perhaps every Jew in squalor," he assented, with a sarcastic laugh; "for too many of the knaves have feathered their nests very comfortably. Even the Raskolnik is more tolerable. And many of them are not even Jews. The Russian Press is infested with these fellows, who take the bread out of the mouths of honest Christians, and will even write the leaders in the religious papers. Believe me, little father, these Jewish scribblers who have planted their flagstaffs everywhere have cost me many a heartache, many a disappointment." I could not help thinking this sentiment somewhat unworthy of my Paul, though it threw a flood of light on the struggle, whose details he had never troubled me with. I began to doubt my wisdom in sending so unpractical a youth out into the battle of life, to hew his way as best he might. But how was I to foresee that he would become a writing man, that he would be tripped up at every turn by some clever Hebrew, and that his aversion from the race would be intensified? "But surely," I said, after a moment of silence, "our Slavic journalists are not all Christians, either." "They are not," he admitted sadly. "The Universities have much to answer for. Instead of rigidly excluding every vicious book that unsettles the great social and religious ideals of which God designed Russia to be the exponent, the works of Spencer and Taine, and Karl Marx and Tourguénieff, and every literary Antichrist, are allowed to poison faith in the sap. The censor only bars the superficially anti-Russian books. But there will come a reaction. A reaction," he added solemnly, "to which this work of mine may, by the grace of God, be permitted to contribute." I could have laughed at my son if I had not felt so inclined to weep. Paul's pietism irritated me for the first time. Was it that _my_ reaction against my past had become stronger than ever, was it that Paul had never exposed his own narrowness so completely before? I know not. I only know I felt quite angry with him. "And how do you know there will ever be a reaction?" I asked.