ost likely I shall be the exception of the rule as regards Doctor
Chwastowski. As in my country every nobleman has his particular Jew in
whom he believes,--though he dislikes the race in general,--so every
democrat has his aristocrat for whom he feels a special weakness.

When going away I asked Doctor Chwastowski about his brothers. He said
that one of them had a brewery at Ploszow, which I knew already from
my aunt's letter; a second had a bookshop at Warsaw; and a third,
who had been at a mercantile school, had gone as assistant with Pan
Kromitzki to the East.

"It is the brewer who has the best of it just now," he said; "but
we all work, and in time shall win good positions. It was lucky our
father lost his fortune; otherwise every one of us would sit on his
bit of land 'glebae adscripti,' and in the end lose it as my father
did."

In spite of the preoccupation of my mind I listened with a certain
interest. "There are, then," I said to myself, "people that are neither
over-civilized nor steeped in ignorance. There are those that can do
something and thus form the intermediate, healthy link between decay
and barbarism." It is possible that this social strata mostly exists
in bigger towns, where it is continually recruited by the influx
of the sons of bankrupt noblemen, who adapt themselves to burgher
traditions of work, and bring to it strong nerves and muscles. I then
recalled what Sniatynski once said when I left him: "From such as you
nothing good can come; your fathers must first lose all they have,
else even your grandsons will not work." And here are Chwastowski's
sons who take to it, and push on in the world by help of their own
strong shoulders. I, too, perhaps, had I no fortune, should have to do
something, and should acquire that energy of decision in which I have
been wanting all my life.

The doctor left me presently as he had another patient at Ploszow, a
young cleric from the Warsaw seminary, the son of one of the Ploszow
peasants. He is in the last stage of consumption. My aunt has given
him a room in one of the out-buildings, where she and Aniela look
after him. When I heard of this I went to pay him a visit, and
instead of the dying man I expected to see, I found a young, rather
thin-looking lad, but bright and full of life. The doctor says it
is the last flicker of the lamp. The young cleric was nursed by his
mother, who, upon seeing me, overwhelmed me with a shower of gratitude
copious enough