"I do not agree with you. He had few acquaintances, and after some years of absence he must have changed enough not to be recognized. We could easily find an asylum for him here where he could escape the police. It would be prudent, however, for him to secure a communal passport."
"May he soon join us," said the young man of the extreme party. "He will be very useful to our cause. We will undertake to conceal him. I have often heard of him; he belongs to the Lithuanian provinces. Nothing could be better. We will send him there to make converts to our cause. What can we do to bring him here?"
"And," asked Kruder, looking at Jacob, "what are Ivas' feelings? You see that here we are all fire, all flame."
"I fear he has too much fire," said Jacob. "Deleterious fire, alas! This flame is, to my mind, the flame of despair. It will drive men to unreasonable acts."
"Behold a cautious man!" cried the young Pole, paling with wrath; "the sentiments of your race can be expressed in two words,--self-interest and logic. We Poles, on the contrary, are led by what you call folly. Is heroism folly? Then it will be by folly that we shall triumph."
"I am not," replied Jacob, "an exclusive partisan of cold reason. Logic leads one astray at times. In a question of life or death for the country's salvation we should not depend entirely on cold reasoning, nor wholly on enthusiasm. Reasoners and enthusiasts are equally at fault, are both on the wrong path."
"Would you, then, have a mixture of folly and reason?"
"Precisely. And I wish it for the common good. In it you will find the veritable national instinct."
"No, no! Popular opinion aspires to a revolution which will accomplish our deliverance."
"The revolutionary agitation is only at the surface," said Jacob. "In the bottom of all hearts there are forebodings of the evils which may arise from a premature explosion."