"Yes, very good indeed," said the count, rousing himself from his brown study.
"Especially the descriptions of the landscape," remarked the magistrate.
"What landscape?" inquired Judith, in surprise. She alone had followed the poem, hoping thereby to regain her self-possession and quiet her wildly beating heart. She had come in obedience to her father's wishes when she heard the count had refused to come, but when he walked in so unexpectedly she felt as though she must fly--fly from herself.
Herr von Wroblewski pretended not to have heard the gentle interruption. "And these people!" he exclaimed, enthusiastically. "One can really see them! And the feeling!" he added, cautiously. "There must have been some such stupid rubbish," he thought. Then he gave his daughter a signal, and she slipped out of the room unperceived.
"Our Thaddeus is a master mind," he exclaimed. "Some of his ballads rival Mickowicz, parole d'honneur! And he is so versatile! After what he has just read, you would class him among sentimental poets. But now, Thaddeus, give us those songs--'Venus in her Night-gown!'"
It was a collection of very ambiguous poems, which, at the last recitation, had driven Judith into another room. She could not understand what had so amused the rest of the company, but her instinct had warned her that they were unfit for her ears.
"Perhaps later on," said the poet; "but now I should like to read the 'Ballad of King Casimir and the Beautiful Esther.'"
"What are you thinking of?" cried Wroblewski, anxiously, for he knew it was a ribald poem against the Jews.
"Let it be!" said Thaddeus. "You have not heard the new version." For, since several Jewish farmers in Eastern Galicia had proven their interest in Polish literature by showing him hospitality for a few days, he had transformed entirely the story of Casimir the Great and his Jewish mistress. "That will fit in splendidly to-day," he thought, "and I may perhaps receive one hundred gulden!" For he had heard of the scene in the ballroom, and the character of his host was a guarantee that Judith and the count had not been brought together on this occasion by accident.
He began to read; the first verses quieted the apprehensions of the head of the house. The former version had shown what a pestilence the Jewish element had been in Poland, but this showed how the chosen people of the Old Testament had found a sanctuary in the poet's native land; and how Casimir, for love of the beautiful Esther, had granted charters to the Jews, and finally made a queen of his beloved. The poem closed with an ardent appeal to charity and fraternity.