"Why do you enter my house and disturb my honoured guest by your foolish talk? The gracious lord is my guest, has known me for years; there! off with you at once."
Meir tried to get out of Jankiel's hands, and though he was the taller and stronger, Jankiel was nimbler, and despair redoubled his energy. Struggling and panting, both rolled towards the door, and the young gentleman looked at the struggle with an amused expression. Meir's pale face towering above Jankiel's red head suddenly flushed.
"Do you laugh at me, gracious lord?" he said brokenly.
"You do not know how difficult it is for me to speak, but guard your house from fire!"
At these last words he disappeared through the door, which the panting Jankiel slammed after him.
The lord of Kamionka still smiled. The struggle between the nimble, red-haired Jankiel and the tall young Jew looked very funny. During the battle the long coat tails had flapped about like wings, and Jankiel, in his desperate efforts to get rid of the intruder, had performed the most extraordinary acrobatic feats. It was a ridiculous scene altogether—the more ridiculous as the combatants belonged to a race at which it was an old, time-honoured custom to laugh. How could the young nobleman understand the deeper meaning of the play enacted before him? He saw before him a young Jew who spoke in broken Polish, the grandson of a merchant, and who would be, in his turn, a merchant. That he was a noble spirit in rebellion against everything mean and dishonest, a despairing spirit longing for freedom and wider knowledge, that coming to him as he did he had done an heroic action that would destroy his whole future—of all this the nobleman had not the slightest suspicion.
After a short pause he looked at Jankiel, and asked:
"Explain to me now; what did it all mean? What kind of a man is he really?"
"What kind of man?" said Jankiel, who seemingly had regained his composure. "It was a stupid affair, and I beg the gracious lord's pardon that it should have happened to him under my roof. He is a madman and very spiteful. He went mad from mere spitefulness."
"Hm!" said the young gentleman. "He did not look like a madman. He has a handsome face and an intelligent one."