"My maggot at times says interesting things. Yesterday I led him into the admission that socialists of the pure water regard as their greatest enemies the peasants and the radical members of the bourgeoisie. I began to pour oil on the fire and he unbosomed himself. An unsophisticated peasant aspires to ownership, and that aspiration the devil cannot eradicate, and as to the bourgeoisie he spoke thus: 'What harm,' he said, 'do these few nobles and priests who infest the world do to us? Our enemy is the bourgeois, rich or poor. Our enemy is the radical, who thinks that as soon as he shouts that he does not believe in God and priests that he buys us. Our enemy is that boaster, who speaks in the name of the common people and is ready to tickle us under the armpits, so that we should smile on him. He is the one who fawns on us, like a dog at a roll of butter, and preserves all the instincts of a bourgeois.' And he chattered further until I said: 'Hold on! Why, you are with the radicals "fratres Helenae!"' And he to this: 'That is not true! The radical, wealthy bourgeois, who from fear dyes in red and borrows the standard and methods from us, introduces confusion in minds and drabbles in the mud our idea; and the poor one, if he annually saves even the smallest amount, injures us for he offers to work at a lower price than the pure proletaire, who always is as poor as Job. We,' he said, 'will put the knife, above all things, to the throats of the bourgeois for latent treachery lurks in him.' Thus he chattered and I was willing to concede justice to him, if in general I believed in justice, but I did not concede it yet for another reason, and that is, he is too stupid to have reasoned out such things. It was evident that he repeated what others taught him. In fact I did not neglect to tell him so." Further discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Dolhanski who, observing Gronski, approached him, although he disliked to meet Swidwicki. "How are you?" he said, "My ladies took a trip to Czestochowo; so I am free. Will you permit me to be seated with you?" "Certainly, certainly. Why, these are your last days." "It would be worth while even for that reason to drink a little bottle," observed Swidwicki, "particularly as it is, besides, my birthday." "If the calendar was a wine-cellar and the dates in it bottles, then your birthday would occur every day," answered Gronski. "I swear to you upon everything at which I jeer, that, contrary to my habit and inclination, this time I speak the truth." Saying this, he nodded to the waiter and ordered him to bring two bottles, calculating that afterwards more would be forthcoming. In the meantime Dolhanski said: "I met Krzycki to-day. He looks poorly; somehow not himself, and he told me that he does not live with you but in a hotel. Did you by chance quarrel?" "No. But he moved away from me and Pani Krzycki from Pani Otocka's."