After a general conversation he left the room with Wilk, and they talked over the measures necessary to secure Ivas' safety.
Alone, Jacob and Bartold embraced warmly, for they loved each other like brothers, despite the rationalism of the one and the piety of the other.
They had an animated discussion on the situation of the Jews in Poland and throughout the world. Jacob, as was his custom, spoke at length on the apostleship he intended undertaking.
"You will lose your time and your efforts," said Bartold; "the era of religious convictions is passed. We live in an age of reason, where it is useless to wish to resuscitate the beliefs of antiquity and of the Middle Ages. The structures which sheltered the wings of the cherubim have crumbled away and can never be raised."
Jacob listened attentively, but his convictions were not shaken. He was persuaded of the necessity of a reform in Judaism that should reestablish the authority of the Mosaic law.
CHAPTER XII.
[A SIREN.]
After some weeks of sojourn at Warsaw Jacob met in the street Luci Coloni, accompanied by Gromof, her Russian cavalier of the grotto at Sestri. He was hastening to salute them, when he perceived that the lady and her companion turned as if to avoid him. Why this mystery? Jacob was puzzled, and paused on his way.
Ivas' affairs were soon arranged; it was no longer necessary to watch over him, and, freed from that anxiety, he dreamed of commencing his Judaic reform. He realized that he had two formidable obstacles to encounter,--on one side indifference, on the other, superstition. The superstitious would regard him as an atheist, the indifferent, as a bigoted fanatic.
Discouraged for the moment, as almost all reformers have been, he sought to regain his former enthusiasm by reading the Bible and the Talmud. To this end he shut himself up for several days, and came out determined to make converts, not among the old, whose convictions were settled, but among the youth, who were still animated with noble instincts. These it was whose opinion he would strive to form. Weary with his long meditations he was going out to walk in the fresh air, when he was handed a note from Madame Wtorkowska, written on satin paper, the contents of which were as follows:--