That was a reason with which Poldik could hardly quarrel—it carried conviction with it. He laid his hat down again and said, “Well, well, doubtless you are in the right. And what then has he to be?”
“A scavenger, Poldik, dear, a scavenger,” responded Malka, almost enthusiastically. “There! now you know why I cannot give him to you.”
“A scavenger!” Poldik was again taken aback, perhaps this time more violently than before. “Perhaps you know of some one,” continued Malka, “who would adopt him and, of course, I will work for both of us in order to pay for his apprenticeship.
She would work for both and could not even work for one, said Poldik to himself with a sigh.
And here a gigantic conception emerged in him. Ay, it is possible that even a giant would have felt himself weak beneath its weight.
Poldik’s head went round at the notion, and he felt as though some tremendous weight had exhausted his feet and hands, and even his tongue and words. He knew what he wished to say, but at that moment it seemed an impossible thing to say it. To-day, at least, it was too much for him; step by step he had gone higher, but now at the same time he felt that if he attempted another round of the ladder, he would stagger and perhaps fall.
He took the final step, staggered, but did not fall. “I know of such a one,” said he. “I will make a scavenger of him for you.”
When Poldik expressed himself in these words he felt as though he had expressed his consent to a crime, and yet, on the other hand, he felt that something stirred within him which gave him wings, just as if he sped in flashing skiff along the Moldau, and just as if he felt a joyous sense of boundless freedom. Malka looked at him as at a man completely new—just as if it was not Poldik, and said: “They do you cruel wrong, Poldik: they say of you that you are an eccentricity, and that you don’t want any one to scavenge. Oh! what a cruel wrong they do you!”
These words confirmed in Poldik the sensation of having acquired wings, although they told him that he was about to undertake something wholly repugnant to his habits of thought.
Well, and so Poldik became once more a scavenger, and I think that in thus doing he reached the highest summit to which his capacities could aspire. For the sake of a fair and noble deed—
