"What am I to say?"  

"You have heard of it, then? Why can you not answer me, uncle Josef? Have you heard that Trendellsohn has dared to ask Nina to be his wife?"  

"There is not so much of daring in it, Ziska. Among you all the poor girl is a beggar. If some one does not take pity on her, she will starve soon."  

"Take pity on her! Do not we all take pity on her?"  

"No," said Josef Balatka, turning angrily against his nephew; "not a scrap of pity — not a morsel of love. You cannot rid yourself of her quite — of her or me — and that is your pity."  

"You are wrong there."  

"Very well; then let me be wrong. I can understand what is before my eyes. Look round the house and see what we are coming to. Nina at the present moment has not got a florin in her purse. We are starving, or next to it, and yet you wonder that she should be willing to marry an honest man who has plenty of money."  

"But he is a Jew!"  

"Yes; he is a Jew. I know that."  

"And Nina knows it."  

"Of course she does. Do you go home and eat nothing for a week, and then see whether a Jew's bread will poison you."  

"But to marry him, uncle Josef!"  

"It is very bad. I know it is bad, but what can I do? If she says she will do it, how can I help it? She has been a good child to me — a very good child; and am I to lie here and see her starve? You would not give to your dog the morsel of bread which she ate this morning before she went out."  

All this was a new light to Ziska. He knew that his uncle and cousin were very poor, and had halted in his love because he was ashamed of their poverty; but he had never thought of them as people hungry from want of food, or cold from want of clothes. It may be said of him, to his credit, that his love had been too strong for his shame, and that he had made up his mind to marry his cousin Nina in spite of her poverty. When Lotta Luxa had called him a calf she had not inappropriately defined one side of his character. He was a good-looking well-grown young man, not very wise, quickly susceptible to female influences, and gifted with eyes capable of convincing him that Nina Balatka was by far the prettiest woman whom he ever 

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