"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:
"If that is so, then you surely belong to the highest aristocracy."