"D---- it all!" swore the old gentleman, wiping the perspiration from his face. "We cannot make it easier. We couldn't go to him, so that he could say the few words. Or--h'm!--do you think we could?" "It would be very unusual," said the magistrate again, sober as the grave. "Unusual! That does not matter! _Mon Dieu!_ Everything must be done for the first time. My dear friend, I beg of you, I implore you to--" "I will do my best," promised Wroblewski, and he kept his word. He went to the count the very next day, and laughingly laid the proposition before him. Agenor laughed aloud. "It is impossible. I am an officer. No matter what I said to the boy, it would be regarded as an apology." "But you don't thirst for his blood. Just consider--a young fellow excited by champagne, and she a Jewess!" "He met her as your guest." "Yes, certainly! I do not intend to excuse Wladko. But be honest, my dear count. Would you have said anything if she had been ugly?" "Yes," said Agenor, seriously. "I do not love the Jews, as you know; quite the contrary; and not because of my experience with them as a young officer. But I find it quite natural that all creatures on earth should protect themselves with their own weapons. Theirs are trickery and money. I have frequently asked myself whose fault it is that they use such weapons. They are often men with splendid abilities, and in many ways more moral than we. I acknowledge it is very largely our own fault. We are antagonistic; we knock them down; they bite us in the heels. So, without pondering over whose fault it is, I place myself in the ranks of those to whom I belong, by blood and position." "But, my dear count!" interrupted the official. "As if it required any words! Do you fancy I like the Jews?" "Your position is not mine," responded Agenor, curtly. "As judge, you cannot be a party man; but I, as a private individual, may, and, as the head of an old family, must be one. For in the contest my class is being ruined. It cuts me to the heart to know this, for I think much of this class, its necessities and its obligations. We aristocrats--I mean we true, pure-blooded, wealthy old families--are the only firm pillars of the state, as, indeed, we Polish aristocrats are the only hope of our nation. There is no other besides us--the middle class scarcely exists, and the peasantry are against us. Look over the country; one man after another, one family after another, falls and sinks into oblivion--through foolishness, idleness, and bad management, I allow. But could we incur debts so readily if there were no Jews in the country? Who is the inheritor? The Jew! Who has possession of the estates of the Wolczinskis, which a hundred years ago were enormous? Armenians, who hold them for the Jews, since they are prohibited from owning real estate themselves." "Very true," responded Wroblewski. "And for this very reason you should not shoot the last of the Wolczinskis!"