"The Russian government agrees with you there," remarked Bartold; "but the nobility is capable of regeneration, of amending. They commence to understand their interests better, and if they hold out their hands to us, we should not refuse them."
"No! the nobles are blind!" cried Mann, in a loud voice. "Give up all thoughts of alliance with them. What matters it to us what happens to them?"
"If we keep aloof now," said Jacob, "it is the same as taking sides with the Russians. Let us go, my friends; when we are called in the spirit of sacrifice, the cause of the weak and the oppressed ought to be ours."
"It is utterly useless to reason with you, dear Jacob. Men of your stamp go to their ruin and perish. I will not oppose you, though I deplore your fate. As for the mass of our people, they should look out for their own interests and for the country."
"Let the majority remain conservative, but not for that alone; they should escape death in order to console and succour those who survive the catastrophe."
"There will be time enough to speak of that," said Mann, with a disdainful gesture.
"It is probable," replied Bartold, "that the burial of the victims of yesterday will be a European manifestation of the regeneration of Poland. Ought we to be indifferent lookers on? to take no part ostensibly in the procession? in a word, to wash our hands of it all?"
"This burial does not concern us," cried Mann. "None of our people have been killed. Why should we thrust ourselves into the quarrel?"
"It is not merely a burial, it is a grand political manifestation," said Jacob. "Before those coffins there will be a national appeal for vengeance against the assassins; and we"--
"We? Let it suffice us to behold from afar that manifestation! And you, Jacob, who preach with so much warmth a good understanding with the Christians, as you are at the same time a fervent and orthodox Jew, you cannot ask us to march behind the coffins, side by side with the Christian clergy. That would be breaking one of our laws, which commands all kohen to keep at a distance from bodies of the dead. How much worse the impure corpses of men of another belief, another race."