"Very well; then let me be wrong. I can understand what is before my eyes. Look round the house and see what we are coming to. Nina at the present moment has not got a florin in her purse. We are starving, or next to it, and yet you wonder that she should be willing to marry an honest man who has plenty of money." "But he is a Jew!" "Yes; he is a Jew. I know that." "And Nina knows it." "Of course she does. Do you go home and eat nothing for a week, and then see whether a Jew's bread will poison you." "But to marry him, uncle Josef!" "It is very bad. I know it is bad, but what can I do? If she says she will do it, how can I help it? She has been a good child to me--a very good child; and am I to lie here and see her starve? You would not give to your dog the morsel of bread which she ate this morning before she went out." All this was a new light to Ziska. He knew that his uncle and cousin were very poor, and had halted in his love because he was ashamed of their poverty; but he had never thought of them as people hungry from want of food, or cold from want of clothes. It may be said of him, to his credit, that his love had been too strong for his shame, and that he had made up his mind to marry his cousin Nina in spite of her poverty. When Lotta Luxa had called him a calf she had not inappropriately defined one side of his character. He was a good-looking well-grown young man, not very wise, quickly susceptible to female influences, and gifted with eyes capable of convincing him that Nina Balatka was by far the prettiest woman whom he ever saw. But, in connection with such calf-like propensities, Ziska was endowed with something of his mother's bitterness and of his father's persistency; and the old Zamenoys did not fear but that the fortunes of the family would prosper in the hands of their son. And when it was known to Madame Zamenoy and to her husband Karil that Ziska had set his heart upon having his cousin, they had expressed no displeasure at the prospect, poor as the Balatkas were. "There is no knowing how it may go about the houses in the Kleinseite," Karil Zamenoy had said. "Old Trendellsohn gets the rent and the interest, but he has little or nothing to show for them--merely a written surrender from Josef, which is worth nothing." No hindrance, therefore was placed in the way of Ziska's suit, and Nina might have been already accepted in the Windberg-gasse had Nina chosen to smile upon Ziska. Now Ziska was told that the girl he loved was to marry a Jew because she was starving, and the tidings threw a new light upon him. Why had he not offered assistance to Nina? It was not surprising that Nina should be so hard to him--to him who had as yet offered her nothing in her poverty but a few cold compliments. "She shall have bread enough, if that is what she wants," said Ziska. "Bread and kindness," said the old man. "She shall have kindness too, uncle Josef. I love Nina better than any Jew in Prague can love her."