"No, Baron Kolár, no," he repeated.
"Then woe to you, sir," said the Baron, measuring him from head to foot.
"Well, then, woe to me," said Langler.
Ah, he was pallid now, with a mulishness of mien which I knew with panic; whereat I at his secret ear breathed in my anguish: "but Emily, Aubrey, fair's fair, loyalty to Emily first, this is too much, you know, Aubrey, Emily first——"
"No, second," he said, with a stiff neck.
"As if duty and God had anything to do with it!" I groaned panic-stricken: "martyrs are martyrs, and die for what they cherish, but to die for a Church which you always call obsolete, for which you care nothing really, except by some trick of culture, it would be too monstrously pitiful, for God's sake, only this once——"
"But what is the matter with Mr Langler?" said Baron Kolár: "my time is short."
"But by what right do you even dream of daring to shed anyone's blood?" asked Langler, turning upon the baron.
"Know that I have this right, Mr Langler," answered the baron sternly: "men like me, whose heads are clear, and whose motives are righteous, have such divine rights."
"One readily admits the righteousness of your motives," said Langler, "but the clearness of your head is less certain, if I may say so. We all intend to do good, Baron Kolár, but to do it is an intricate trick, only given to critics. You seem in your scheming to have quite forgotten the moral reaction which must follow upon the sudden death of faith, and upon the disclosure that the men who try to remind the world of God are a gang of misdoers. Is it nothing to you that to-morrow every wanton impulse of men's hearts will lift its head, the restraints of ages once swept away? Your motives are good: why should you not give up this scheme even now, and I, on my side, should be able to vow myself to silence?"