"I fear that in the meantime they may get well; but it can't be helped, I must go!"
"And for how long?"
"I do not know, but do not think very long. I am a Volhynian Mazur, from the minor nobility of that place, or as they say there of the single-manor nobles. They are mostly settled there as tenants of various petty nobles, but I have my own seat in partnership with a brother, an ex-judge, who has charge of the estate and to whom I am now riding."
"But, of course, not because he is sick?"
"Certainly, sir; he has become insane."
"My God! Since when?"
"Not long ago. From the time he became a 'local rights' man.'"
"Ah."
"That is so. The indigent, haughty noble took a notion to pose as a landed proprietor, hankered after the society of gentlemen, and got water on the brain. A month ago I sent him two thousand primers for our impoverished shabby gentility, of whom no one thinks and who involuntarily or rather in spite of their will, are there losing their Polish spirit. And would you believe it, sir, that he sent back to me the whole package, together with a letter in which he announced that he would not distribute the primers."
"Why?" asked Gronski, whom the narrative of the doctor began to interest.