"I know, I know. But how will you prove that which you said about the Polish tories?" "How will I prove it? By the Socratic method--with the aid of questions. Did you ever observe when a Polish gentleman abroad becomes acquainted with a Frenchman or Englishman? I, while I had money, passed winters in Nice or in Cairo and saw a number of them. Now, every time I propounded to myself the question which now I put to you: why the devil it is not the Frenchman or Englishman who tries to please the Pole, but the Pole them? Why is it that only the Pole fawns, only the Pole coquets? Because he is almost ashamed of his descent; and if by chance a Frenchman tells him that from his accent he took him for a Frenchman, or an Englishman takes him for an Englishman, then he melts with joy, like butter in a frying-pan! Ah, I have seen such coquettes by the score--and it is an old story. Such coquetry, for instance, Stanislaus Augustus[11] possessed. At home, the Polish gentleman at times knows how to hold his nose high. Before a foreigner he is on both paws. Is not that a lack of pride in his own race, in his own blood, in his own traditions? If you have the slightest grain of a sense of justice, even though no larger than the grain of caviar, you must admit the justice of my remarks. As to myself, I have been ashamed sometimes that I am a Pole." "That means that you committed the same sin with which you charge others," replied Gronski. "If the tips of the wings of our eagle reached both seas, as at one time they did, perhaps Poles might be different. But at present--tell me--of what are they to be proud?" "You are twisting things. I am speaking of racial pride only, not political," answered Swidwicki. "After all, may the devils take them. I prefer to drink." "Say what you will," asserted Dolhanski, "but I will merely tell you this: if internal affairs were exclusively in their hands, some fooleries might take place, but we would not be fried in the sauce in which we are fried to-day." Swidwicki turned to him with eyes glistening already a little abnormally. "My dear sir," he said, "in order to govern a country it is necessary to have one of three things: either the greatest number, which the canaille has behind it--I beg pardon, I should have said the Democracy--or the greatest sound sense, which nobody amongst us possesses, or the most money, which the Jews have. And as I have demonstrated that our great gentlemen do not even have any sentiment of traditions, therefore what have they?" "At least good manners, which you lack," retorted Dolhanski with aversion. "No. I will tell you what they have--if not all of them, then the second or third one: but I will tell it to you in a whisper, so as not to shock Gronski's virgin ears." And leaning over to Dolhanski, he whispered a word to him, after which he snorted, maliciously: "I do not say that that is nothing, but it is not sufficient to govern the country with." But Dolhanski frowned and said: