All the inmates of the house were now assembled, except the professor's wife. She always kept people waiting.
"Oh yes, my wife," remarked the professor, "she gives me sufficient proof that time is something subjective. She always has her own."
At last she came, heated and with fluttering red cap-ribbons. They could go to dinner.
Count Hamilcar loved this situation: to sit at the head of the long table, look down the lines of young faces, and hear the buzzing of the lowered voices. That cheered him. Then he kept up the conversation, and tried to have it agreeable and harmonious. But today something like a discordant note came into it.
They were talking politics. The professor was a patriot and a National Liberal. He interrupted the consumption of his peas, seized a crouton with thumb and forefinger, gesticulated with it, and said enthusiastically,
"Now, if you please, in science I as a scholar follow reason and logic quite unreservedly, wherever they may lead me, but in politics it is different, there an important factor is added, an emotion, the love of the German fatherland. Understanding and logic must share the supremacy with love, no, what am I saying--they must be subordinate to love; yes, actually subordinate. So I too am quite ready to be at times illogical for love of the fatherland. Yes, my dear count, I am."
He looked triumphantly about him and laughed.
"Surely, surely," said the count, "it would be a bad thing anyway, if we were not now and then willing to be illogical."
Here Boris bent forward and began to speak with his slightly singing Slavic accent and his trilled r:
"You are quite right, Professor, but it need not always be love, it can also be hate. To us Poles hate is sacred too."