chamber, though the last gleam of twilight was quenched. Pan Stanislav,
for a greeting, began to kiss both her hands, and, forgetting
completely his wise introduction, asked in a voice somewhat uncertain
and excited,--

"Have you received the flowers and the letter?"

"I have."

"And did you guess why I sent them?"

Marynia's heart beat with such force that she could not answer.

Pan Stanislav inquired further, with a still more broken voice,--

"Do you agree to Litka's wish,--do you want me?"

"I do," answered Marynia.

Then he, in the feeling that it was proper to thank her, sought words
in vain; but he pressed her hands more firmly to his lips, and, holding
them both, drew her gently nearer and nearer. Suddenly a flame seized
him; he put his arms around her, and began to seek her lips with his
own. But Marynia turned away her head so that he could kiss only the
hair on her temples. For a while only their hurried breathing was heard
in the darkness; at last Marynia wrested herself from his arms.

A few moments later the servant brought a light. Pan Stanislav,
recovering himself, was alarmed at his own boldness, and looked into
Marynia's eyes with disquiet. He was sure that he had offended her, and
was ready to beg her forgiveness. But he saw with wonder that there
were no traces of anger in her face. Her eyes were downcast, her cheeks
flushed, her hair disarranged somewhat; it was evident that she was
disturbed and, as it were, dazed, but withal only penetrated with the
perfect sweetness of that fear which comes to a woman who is loved,
and who, in passing over the new threshold, feels that she must yield
something there, but who passes over and yields because she wishes.
She loves, and she is obliged to yield in view of the rights which she
accords to the man.

But a vivid feeling of gratitude passed through Pan Stanislav at sight
of her. It seemed to him then that he loved her as he had loved of old,
before Litka's death. He felt also that in that moment he could not
be too delicate nor too magnanimous; hence, taking her hand again, he
raised it to his lips with great respect, and said,--

"I know that I am not worthy of you; there is no discussion on that
point. God knows that I shall always do for you what is in my power."

Marynia looked at him with moist eyes and said, "If only you are happy."

"Is it possible not to be happy with you? I saw that from the first
moment at Kremen. But afterward, you know, everything was spoiled. I
thought you would marry Mashko, and how I worried--"

"I was angry, and I beg forgiveness--my dear--Pan Stas."

"This very day the professor said, 'Marynia is gold,'" exclaimed Pan
Stanislav, with great ardor. "This is true! all say the same--not only
gold, but a treasure--a very precious one."

Her kindly eyes began to smile at him: "Maybe a heavy one."

"Let not your head ache over that. I have strength enough; I shall be
able to bear it. Now at least I have something to live for."

"And I," answered Marynia.

"Do you know that I have been here already to-day? I sent
chrysanthemums later. After yesterday's letter to you, I said to
myself, 'That is simply an angel, and I should lack, not only heart,
but common-sense to delay any longer.'"

"I was so alarmed about that duel, and so unhappy. But is it all over
now?"

"I give you my word, most thoroughly."

Marynia wanted to make further inquiries, but at that moment Plavitski
came. They heard him cough a little, put away his cane, and remove his
overcoat; he opened the door then, and, seeing them alone, said,--

"So you are sitting all by yourselves?"

But Marynia ran up to him, and placing her hands on his shoulders, and
putting forth her forehead for a kiss, said,--

"As betrothed, papa."

Plavitski stepped back a little and inquired, "What dost thou say?"

"I say," answered she, looking quietly into his eyes, "that Pan
Stanislav wishes to take me, and that I am very happy."

Pan Stanislav approached, embraced Plavitski heartily, and said, "I do
with uncle's consent and permission."

But Plavitski exclaimed, "Oh, my child!" and, advancing with tottering
step to a sofa, he sat on it heavily. "Wait a moment," said he, with
emotion. "It will pass--do not mind me--my children! If that is needed,
I bless you with my whole heart."

And he blessed them; wherewith still greater emotion mastered him,
for, after all, he loved Marynia really. The voice stuck in his throat
repeatedly; and the two young people heard only such broken expressions
as, for example, "Some corner near you--for the old man, who worked all
his life--an only child--an orphan."

They pacified him together, and pacified him so well that half an hour
later Plavitski struck Pan Stanislav on the shoulder suddenly, and
said,--

"Oh robber! Thou wert thinking of Marynia, and I was thinking thee a
little--" He finished the rest in Pan Stanislav's ear, who grew red
with indignation, and answered,--

"How could uncle suppose such a thing? If any one else had dared to say
that?"

"Well, well, well!" answered Plavitski, smiling; "there is no smoke
without fire."

That evening Marynia, taking farewell of Pan Stanislav, asked,--

"You will not refuse me one thing?"

"Nothing that you command."

"I have said long to myself that if a moment like the present should
come, we would go to Litka together."

"Ah, my dear lady," answered Pan Stanislav; and she continued,--

"I know not what people will say; but what do we care for the
world--what indeed?"

"Nothing. I am thankful to you from my heart and soul for the
thought--My dear lady--my Marynia!"

"I believe that she looks at us and prays for us."

"Then she is our little patroness."

"Good-night."

"Good-night."

"Till to-morrow."

"Till to-morrow," said he, kissing her hands,--"till after to-morrow,
daily;" and here he added in a low voice, "Until our marriage."

"Yes," answered Marynia.

Pan Stanislav went out. In his head and in his heart he felt a great
whirl of feelings, thoughts, impressions, above which towered one
great feeling,--that something unheard of in its decisiveness had
happened; that his fate had been settled; that the time of reckoning,
of wavering and changing, had passed; that he must begin a new life.
And that feeling was not unpleasant to him,--nay, it verged on a kind
of delight, especially when he remembered how he had kissed Marynia's
hair and temples. That which was lacking in his feelings shrank and
vanished almost utterly in this remembrance; and it seemed to Pan
Stanislav that he had found everything requisite to perfect happiness.
"I shall never grow sated with this," thought he; and it seemed to him
simply impossible that he should. He remembered then the goodness of
Marynia, and how reliable she was; how on such a heart and character
he might build; how in living with her nothing could ever threaten
him; how she would not trample on any quality of his, nor make it of
no avail; how she would receive as gold that which in him was gold;
how she would live for him, not for herself. And, meditating in this
way, he asked what better could he find? and he wondered indeed at his
recent hesitation. Still he felt that what was coming was a change so
gigantic, so immensely decisive, that somewhere at the bottom, in the
deepest corner of his soul, there was roused a kind of alarm before
this unknown happiness. But he did not hesitate. "I am neither a coward
nor an imbecile," thought he. "It is necessary to go ahead, and I will
go."

Returning home, he looked at Litka; and immediately there opened before
him, as it were, a new, clear horizon. He thought that he might have
children, have such a bright dear head as this--and with Marynia. At
the very thought his heart began to beat with greater life, and to the
impulse of thoughts was joined such a solace of life as he had not
known previously. He felt almost perfectly happy. Looking by chance at
Bukatski's letter, which he took from his pocket before undressing, he
laughed so heartily that the servant looked in with astonishment. Pan
Stanislav wished to tell him that he was going to marry. He fell asleep
only toward morning, but rose sprightly and fresh; after dressing, he
flew to his office to announce the news to Bigiel at the earliest.

Bigiel embraced him, then, with his usual deliberation, proceeded to
consider the affair, and said finally,--

"Reasoning the matter over, this is the wisest thing that thou hast
done in life;" then, pointing to a box of papers, he added, "Those
contracts ought to be profitable, but thine is still better."

"Isn't it?" exclaimed Pan Stanislav, boastfully.

"I will fly to tell my wife," said Bigiel, "for I cannot contain
myself; but go thou home, and go for good. I will take thy place till
the wedding, and during the honeymoon."

"Very well; I will hurry to see Mashko, and then Marynia and I will go
to Litka."

"That is due from you both to her."

Pan Stanislav bought more flowers on the way, added a note to them
that he would come soon, and dropped in to see Mashko. Mashko was
notably better, under the care of Pani Kraslavski, and was looking for
her arrival every moment. When he had heard the news, he pressed Pan
Stanislav's hand with emotion, and said,--

"I will tell thee only one thing,--I do not know whether she will be
happy with thee, but certainly thou wilt be happy with her."

"Because women are better than men," answered Pan Stanislav. "After
what has happened to thee, I hope that thou art of this opinion."

"I confess that to this moment I cannot recover from astonishment. They
are both better, and more mysterious. Imagine to thyself--" Here Mashko
halted, as if hesitating whether to continue.

"What?" inquired Pan Stanislav.

"Well, thou art a discreet man, and hast given me, besides, such proofs
of friendship that there may not be secrets between us. Imagine, then,
that yesterday, after thy departure, I received an anonymous letter.
Here, as thou art aware, the noble custom of writing such letters
prevails. In the letter were tidings that Papa Kraslavski exists, is
alive, and in good health."

"Which, again, may be gossip."

"But also may not be. He lives, probably, in America. I received the
letter while Pani Kraslavski was here. I said nothing; but after a
time, when she had examined those portraits, and began to inquire of my
more distant family relations, I asked her, in turn, how long she had
been a widow. She answered,--

"'My daughter and I have been alone in the world nine years; and those
are sad events, of which I do not wish to speak to-day.'

"Observe that she did not say directly when her husband died."

"And what dost thou think?"

"I think that if papa is alive, he must be that kind of figure of which
people do not speak, and that in truth those may be 'sad events.'"

"The secret would have come out long ago."

"Those ladies lived abroad some years. Who knows? That, however, will
not change my plans in any way. If Pan Kraslavski is living in America,
and does not return, he must have reasons; it is as if he were not in
the world, then. In fact, I am gaining the hope now that my marriage
will come to pass, for I understand that when people have something to
hide, they exact less."

"Pardon my curiosity," said Pan Stanislav, taking his hat; "but with me
it is a question of my money, and now touching the Kraslavskis. Dost
thou know surely that these ladies have money?"

"It seems that they have much; still, I am playing against a card
somewhat hidden. It is likely that they have much ready money. The
mother told me repeatedly that her daughter would not need to look to
her husband's property. I saw their safe; they keep a big house. I know
nearly all the money-lenders--Jews and non-Jews--in Warsaw, and I know
surely that these ladies are not in debt a copper to any one; as thou
knowest thyself, they have a nice villa not far from the Bigiels. They
do not live on their capital, for they are too prudent."

"Thou hast no positive figures, however?"

"I tried to get them, but in roundabout fashion. Not being too certain
of my connection with the ladies, I could not insist overmuch. It was
given me to understand that there would be two hundred thousand rubles,
and perhaps more."

Pan Stanislav took leave, and on the way to the Plavitskis' thought,
"All this is a kind of mystery, a kind of darkness, a kind of risk. I
prefer Marynia."

Half an hour later he was driving with Marynia to the cemetery, to
Litka. The day was warm, as in spring, but gray; the city seemed sullen
and dirty. In the cemetery the melting snow had slipped in patches to
the ground from the graves, and covered the yellow, half-decayed grass.
From the arms of crosses and leafless tree-branches large drops were
falling, which, borne from time to time by gusts of warm wind, struck
the faces of Pan Stanislav and Marynia. These gusts pulled Marynia's
dress, so that she had to hold it. They stopped at last before Litka's
grave.

And here all was wet, sloppy, gloomy, half-stripped of the melting
snow. The thought that that child, once so cared for, so loved, and so
petted, was lying in that damp dungeon darkness, could hardly find a
place in Pan Stanislav's head.

"All this may be natural," thought he; "but it is not possible to
be reconciled with death." And, in truth, whenever he visited Litka,
he returned from the cemetery in a kind of irrepressible rebellion,
with a species of passionate protest in his soul. These thoughts began
to rend him in that moment also. It seemed to him simply terrible to
love Litka, and to reconcile his love with the knowledge that a few
steps lower down she is lying there, black and decaying. "I ought not
to come," said he to himself, "for I grow mad, lose my head here, and
lose every basis of life." But, above all, he suffered, for, if it is
impossible not to think of death, it is equally impossible to explain
it; hence everything touching it, which comes to the head, is, in so
far as a man does not stretch forth his hand toward simple faith, at
once despairing and shallow, trivial and common. "For me there is a
greater question here than that of existence itself, but I am only able
to answer with a commonplace. A perfectly vicious circle!"

And it was true; for if he considered, for example, that at the
first thought of death everything becomes smoke, and he felt that
unfortunately it does, he felt at the same time that thousands of
people had come to that thought before he had, and that no one had
found in it either solace or even such satisfaction as the discovery
of a truth gives. Everything that he could say to himself was at once
terrifying and petty. It was easy for him to understand that the whole
life of man, general history, all philosophies, are at bottom merely
a struggle with incessant death,--a struggle despairing, a struggle
utterly senseless, and at the same time infinitely foolish and devoid
of object, for it is lost in advance. But such reasoning could not
bring him any comfort, since it was merely the confirmation of a new
vicious circle.

For if the one object of all human efforts is life, and the only result
death, the nonsense passes measure, and simply could not be accepted,
were it not for that loathsome and pitiless reality, which turns beings
beloved and living into rotten matter.

Pan Stanislav, during every visit to the cemetery, poisoned himself
with such thoughts. To-day, while going, he thought that the presence
of Marynia would liberate him from them; meanwhile, rather the opposite
happened. Litka's death, which had broken in him trust in the sense
and moral object of life, undermined in him also that first, former
love for Marynia, which was so naïve and free of doubt; now, when with
Marynia, he was standing at Litka's grave, when that death, which had
begun to be only a memory, had become again a thing almost tangible,
its poisoning effect was increasing anew. Again it seemed to him that
all life, consequently love, too, is merely an error, and the processes
of life utterly useless and vain. If above life there is neither reason
nor mercy, why toil, why love and marry? Is it to have children, become
attached to them with every drop of one's blood, and then look on
helplessly, while that blind, stupid, insulting, brutal force chokes
them, as a wolf chokes a lamb, and come to their graves, and think that
they are mouldering in damp and darkness? See, Litka is down there.

A day wonderfully gloomy only strengthened the bitterness of these
feelings. At times, during his previous visits, the cemetery had seemed
to Pan Stanislav a kind of great void in which life was dissolving, but
in which every misfortune, too, was dissolving,--something enormously
dreamy, soothing. To-day there was no rest in it. Pieces of snow fell
from the trees and gravestones; ravens pushed about among the wet trees
with their croaking. Sudden and strong blasts of wind hurled drops of
moisture from the branches, and, driving them about, produced a certain
desperate struggle around the stone crosses, which stood firm and
indifferent.

Just then Marynia ceased praying, and said, with that slightly
suppressed voice with which people speak in cemeteries,--

"Now her soul must be near us."

Pan Stanislav made no answer; but he thought first that he and Marynia
were beings as if from two distinct worlds, and then that if there were
even a particle of truth in what she said, all his mental struggles
would be less important than that melting snow. "In such case," said
he to himself, "there is dying and there are cemeteries, but there is
simply no death."

Marynia began to place on the grave immortelles, which she had
bought at the gate, and he to think hurriedly, rather by the aid of
his impressions than his ideas, "In my world there is no answer to
anything; there are only vicious circles, which lead to the precipice."

And this struck him,--that if such ideas of death as Marynia had,
did not come from faith, or if they had been unknown altogether, and
if all at once some philosopher had formulated them as a hypothesis,
the hypothesis would be recognized as the most genial of the genial,
because it explains everything, gives an answer to questions, gives
light, not only to life, but to death, which is darkness. Mankind would
kneel with admiration before such a philosopher and such a scientific
theory.

On the other hand, he felt that still something of Litka was there with
them. She herself was falling into dust, but something had survived
her; there remained, as it were, currents of her thought, of her will,
of her feeling. This,--that she had brought him to Marynia; that
they were betrothed; that they were then standing at her grave; that
they were to be united; that their lives would go on together; that
they would have children, who in their turn would live and love and
increase,--what was that, if not such a current, which, coming forth
from that child, might go on and on through eternity, renewing itself
in an endless chain of phenomena? How then understand that from a
mortal being should issue an immortal and ceaseless energy? Marynia, in
the simplicity of her faith, had found an answer; Pan Stanislav had not.

And still Marynia was right. Litka was with them. Through Pan
Stanislav's head there flew at that moment a certain hypothesis, dim,
and not fixed in close thought yet,--a hypothesis, that, perhaps, all
which man thinks during life, all that he wishes, all that he loves,
is a hundred times more intangible, a hundred times more subtile, than
ether, from which rises an astral existence, conscious of itself,
either eternal or successively born into beings more and more perfect,
more subtile, on to infinity. And it seemed to him that atoms of
thought and feeling might collect into a separate individuality,
specially because they came forth from one brain or one heart; that
they are related,--hence tend to one another with the same mysterious
principle by which physical elements combine to form physical
individualities.

At present he had not time to meditate over this, but it seemed to him
that he had caught something, that in the veil before his eyes, he saw,
as it were, an opening that might turn out to be a deception; but at
the moment, when he felt that still Litka was with them, he thought
that her presence could be understood only in that manner.

Just then some funeral came, for, in the tower, which stood in the
middle of the cemetery, the bell began to sound. Pan Stanislav gave
Marynia his arm, and they went towards the gate. On the way Marynia,
thinking evidently more about Litka, said,--

"Now I am certain that we shall be happy."

And she leaned more on Pan Stanislav's arm, for the gusts of wind had
become so violent that it was difficult for her to resist them. One
of these carried her veil around his neck. Reality began to call to
him. He pressed the arm of the living woman to his side, and felt that
loving, if it cannot ward away death, can at least harmonize life.

When they were seated in the carriage, he took Marynia's hand, and did
not let it go during the whole way. At moments solace returned to him
almost perfectly, for he thought that that maiden, true and kind to
the core of her nature, would be able to make good what was lacking in
his feeling, and revivify in him that which was palsied. "My wife! my
wife!" repeated he, in mind, looking at her; and her honest, clear eyes
answered, "Thine."

When they arrived at the house, Plavitski had not returned from his
walk before dinner; they were all by themselves then. Pan Stanislav sat
down by her side, and under the influence of those thoughts which had
passed through his head on the way, he said,--

"You declared that Litka was with us; that is true. I have always
returned from the cemetery as if cut down; but it is well that we were
there."

"It is; for we went as if for a blessing," said Marynia.

"I have that same impression; and, besides, it seems to me as if we
were united already, or, at least, were nearer than before."

"True; and this will be both a sad and a pleasant remembrance."

He took her hand again, and said,--

"If you believe that we shall be happy, why defer happiness? My kind,
my best, I, too, trust that it will be well with us; let us not defer
the day. We have to begin a new life; let us begin it promptly."

"Make the decision. I am yours with all my soul."

Then he drew her toward him, as he had the day before, and began to
seek her lips with his lips; and she, whether under the influence of
the thought that his rights were greater on that day, or under the
influence of awakening thoughts, did not turn her head away any more,
but, half closing her eyes, she herself gave him her lips, as if they
had been thirsty a long time.

CHAPTER XXVII.

For Pan Stanislav began now the period of ante-nuptial cares and
preparations. He had, it is true, a dwelling furnished for more than a
year,--that is, from a period before he knew Marynia. At that time he
made no denial when Bukatski laughed at the lodgings, seeing in them a
proof of how anxious his friend was to marry. "Yes," said he; "I have
property enough to permit this. I think, too, that I am doing something
toward it, and that my plans are growing real."

Bukatski said this was prevision worthy of praise, and wondered that
a man of such foresight did not engage also a nurse and a midwife. At
times conversation of this kind ended in a quarrel, for Pan Stanislav
could not let any one deny him sound judgment in worldly matters.
Bukatski affirmed that it was bird romance, worthy of a bunting, to
start with building a poetic nest. One friend contended that there
could be no wiser method than to build a cage, if you want a bird;
the other retorted that if the bird were not found yet, and the chase
was uncertain, the cage was a joke on one's appetite. It ended with
allusions to the slim legs of Bukatski, which, for him, made the chase
after birds of all kinds impossible, even though they were wingless.
Bukatski, on such occasions, fell into excellent humor.

Now, however, when the cage was ready, and the bird not only caught,
but willing, there remained so much to be done that Pan Stanislav was
seized more than once by surprise that an act so simple by nature as
marriage, should be so complex in civilized societies. It seemed to
him that if no one has the right to look into the moral side of the
connection, since it is the outcome of genuine free-will, the formal
side should be looked at still less.

But he thought so because he was not a law-giver, and was an impulsive
man made impatient by the need of getting "papers." Once he had
resolved on marriage, he ceased to think or to analyze, and hastened,
as a man of action, to execute.

He was even filled more than once with pride, on comparing himself
with such a man, for instance, as Ploshovski, whose history had been
circling from mouth to mouth in society, before people had begun to
learn it from his diary. "But I am of different metal," thought Pan
Stanislav, with a certain satisfaction. At moments, again, when he
recalled Ploshovski's figure, his noble, delicate, and also firmly
defined profile, his refinement, subtlety, and mental suppleness, his
rare gift of winning people, especially women, it occurred to him that
he, Polanyetski, is a less refined type, less noble, and, in general, a
man cut from ruder materials. But to this he answered that evidently,
in the face of conditions in life and the resistance required by it,
too much refinement is simply fatal to mind as well as body. In himself
he saw also far more ability for living. "Finally," said he, "I can be
of some service, while he would have been good only on social shelves
with curiosities. I am able to win bread; he was able only to make
pellets out of bread when baked. I know how, and I know well how, to
color cotton; he only knew how to color women's cheeks. But what a
difference between us with reference to women! That man over-analyzed
his life and the life of the woman whom he loved; he destroyed her and
himself by not being able to escape from the doubt whether he loved
her sufficiently. I, too, have doubts whether my love is perfect; but
I take my little woman, and should be an imbecile, not a man, to fear
the future, and fail to squeeze from it in simple fashion what good and
happiness it will let me squeeze."

Here Pan Stanislav, though he had forsworn analysis, began to analyze,
not himself, it is true, but Marynia. He permitted this, however, only
because he foresaw certainly favorable conclusions; he understood that,
in calculating the future of two people, good-will on one side is not
sufficient, and becomes nothing, if good-will fails on the other.
But he was convinced that in taking Marynia he was not taking a dead
heart. Marynia had brought to the world not only an honest nature, but
from years of childhood she had been in contact with work and with
conditions in which she was forced to forget herself, so as to think
of others. Besides, there was above her the memory of a mother, a kind
of endless blessing from beyond the grave,--a mother whose calmness,
candor, and uprightness, whose life, full of trials, were remembered
to the present with the utmost respect, throughout the whole region
of Kremen. Pan Stanislav knew this, and was persuaded that, building
on the heart and character of Marynia, he was building on a foundation
well-nigh immovable. More than once he recalled the words of a woman,
an acquaintance and friend of his mother's, who, when some one asked
her whether she was more anxious about the future of her sons than her
daughters, answered, "I think only of my sons; for my daughters, in the
worst case, can be only unhappy."

So it is! School and the world rear sons, and both may make them
scoundrels; daughters, in whom the home ingrafts honorableness, can, in
the worst case, be only unhappy. Pan Stanislav understood that this was
true with regard to Marynia. So that if he analyzed her, his analysis
was rather the examination of a jeweller and his admiration for his
gems, than a scientific method intended to reach results unknown and
unexpected.

Still he quarrelled once with Marynia very seriously, because of
a letter from Vaskovski, which Pan Stanislav received from Rome a
few weeks after the professor's departure, and which he read in its
integrity to Marynia. This letter was as follows:--

     MY DEAR,--I am lodging at Via Tritone, Pension Française.
     Visit my Warsaw lodgings; see if Snopchinski looks after my little
     boys properly, and if the birds of Saint Francis have seeds and
     water in plenty. When spring comes, it will be needful to open the
     windows and cages; whichever bird wishes to stay, let it stay,
     and whichever one wishes to go, let it fly. The boys of the genus
     _homo sapiens_ should have good food, since I left money therefor,
     and besides little moralizing, but much love. Snopchinski is a
     worthy man, but a hypochondriac. He says this comes from snows.
     When he is attacked by what he calls "chandra," he looks for whole
     weeks on his boots, and is silent; but one must talk with little
     boys, to give them confidence. This is all that touches Warsaw.

     I am printing here in French, in the typography of the journal
     "L'Italie," that work of mine which I discussed with thee. They
     laugh at my French a little, and at me, but I am used to that.
     Bukatski came here. He is a good, beloved fellow! he has grown
     strange to the last degree, and says that he drags his feet after
     him, though I have not noticed it. He loves both Marynia and thee,
     and indeed every one, though he denies it. But when he begins to
     talk, one's ears wither. May the Lord God bless thee, dear boy,
     and thy honest Marynia! I should like to be at thy wedding, but
     I know not whether I shall finish my work before Easter; listen,
     therefore, now to what I tell thee, and know that I write this
     letter to that end. Do not think that the old man is talking just
     to talk. Thou knowest, besides, that I have been a teacher; that
     the inheritance from my brother freed me from that occupation;
     that I have had experience and have seen things. If ye have
     children, do not torture them with knowledge; let them grow up
     as God wills. I might stop here; but thou art fond of figures,
     hence I will give thee figures. A little child has as many hours
     of labor as a grown man in office, with this difference, that
     the man talks during office hours with his colleagues, or smokes
     cigarettes; the child must strain its attention continually,
     or lose the clew of lessons, and cease to understand what is
     said to it. The man goes home when his work is done; the child
     must prepare for the following day, which takes four hours from
     a capable child, from one less capable six. Add to this, that
     poorer pupils give lessons frequently, the rich take them, which,
     added, gives twelve hours. Twelve hours' labor for a child! Dost
     understand that, my dear? Canst thou realize what sickly natures
     must grow up in such conditions,--natures out of joint, inclined
     to the wildest manias, crooked, wilful? Dost thou understand how
     we are filling cemeteries with our children, and why the most
     monstrous ideas find supporters? Ah, at present they are limiting
     the hours of labor in factories even for grown people, but
     touching children at school philanthropy is silent. Oh, but that
     is a field! that is a service to be rendered; that is a coming
     glory and sainthood. Do not torture thy children with learning,
     I beg thee--and I beg Marynia; promise me both of you. I do not
     speak just to speak, as Bukatski says sometimes, but I speak from
     the heart; and this is the greatest reform for which future ages
     are waiting, the greatest after the introduction of Christ into
     history. Something wonderful happened to me in Perugia a few days
     since, but of that I will tell thee sometime, and now I embrace
     both of you.

Marynia listened to this letter, looking at the tips of her shoes,
like that Snopchinski of whom the Professor wrote. But Pan Stanislav
laughed, and said,--

"Have you ever heard anything like this? It is long before our
marriage; but he is lamenting over our children, and takes the field on
their behalf. This is somewhat the history of my nest."

After a while he added, "To tell the truth, the fault is mine; for
I made him various promises." And, inclining so that he could see
Marynia's eyes, he asked, "But what do you say to this letter?"

Pan Stanislav, inquiring thus, had chanced on that unhappy moment when
a man is not himself, and acts not in accordance with his own nature.
He was rather a harsh person generally, but not brutal, and at times
was even capable of delicate acts, really womanlike. But now, in his
look and in the question directed to a young lady so mimosa-like as
Marynia, there was something simply brutal. She knew as well as others
that after marriage come children; but this seemed to her something
indefinite, not to be mentioned, or if mentioned, mentioned in
allusions as delicate as lace, or in a moment of emotion, with beating
heart, with loving lips at the ear, with solemnity,--as touching what
is most sacred in a mutual future. Hence Pan Stanislav's careless tone
outraged and pained her. She thought, "Why does he not understand
this?" and she in turn acted not in accordance with her nature; for,
as happens frequently with timid persons in moments of bitterness and
confusion, they exhibit greater anger than they feel.

"You should not treat me in this way!" cried she, indignantly. "You
should not speak to me in this way!"

Pan Stanislav laughed again with feigned gayety.

"Why are you angry?" inquired he.

"You do not act with me as is proper."

"I do not understand the question."

"So much the worse."

The smile vanished from his lips; his face grew dark, and he spoke
quickly, like a man who has ceased to reckon with his words.

"Perhaps I am stupid; but I know what is right and what is not. In this
way life becomes impossible. Whoever makes great things out of nothing
must not blame others. But, since my presence is disagreeable, I go!"

And, seizing his hat, he bowed, and went out. Marynia did not try to
detain him. For a while offence and anger stifled in her all other
sensations; then there remained to her only an impression, as if from
the blow of a club. Her thoughts scattered like a flock of birds. Above
them towered only one dim idea: "All is over! he will not return!"
Thus fell the structure which had begun to unite in such beautiful
lines. Emptiness, nothingness, a torturing, because objectless life,
and a chilled heart,--that is what remained to her. And happiness had
been so near! But that which had taken place so suddenly was something
so strange that she could not explain immediately. She went to the
writing-desk, and began mechanically to arrange papers in it, with
a certain objectless haste, as if there could be any reason at that
moment for arranging them. Then she looked at Litka's photograph, and
sat down quickly with her hands on her eyes and temples. After a time
it occurred to her that Litka's will must be stronger than the will
of them both, and a ray of hope shone in on her suddenly. She began to
walk in the room, and to think on what had passed; she recalled Pan
Stanislav, not only as he had been just then, but earlier,--two, three
days, a week before. Her regret became greater than her feeling of
offence, and it increased with her affection for Pan Stanislav. After
a time she said in her soul that she was not free to forget herself;
that it was her duty to accept and love Pan Stanislav as he was, and
not strive to fix him to her ideas. "That is, he is a living man, not
a puppet," repeated she, a number of times. And a growing feeling of
fault seized her, and after that compunction. A heart submissive by
nature, and greatly capable of loving, struggled against sound sense,
which she possessed undoubtedly, and which now told her in vain that
reason was not on Pan Stanislav's side, and that, moreover, she had
said nothing which needed pardon. She said to herself, "If he has a
good heart, even to a small extent, he will return;" but she was seized
also with fear in view of the self-love of men in general, and of Pan
Stanislav in particular,--she was too intelligent not to note that
he cared greatly to pass for an unbending person. But considerations
of that kind, which an unfriendly heart would have turned to his
disadvantage, had made her tender only on his behalf.

Half an hour later she was convinced to the depth of her soul that
the fault lay only on her side; that "she had tormented him so much
already" that she ought to yield now,--that is, to be the first to
extend a hand in conciliation. That meant in her mind to write a few
peace-making words. He had suffered so much from that affair of Kremen
that this was due to him. And she was ready even to weep over his fate.
She hoped, withal, that he, the bad, ugly man, would estimate what it
cost her to write to him, and would come that same evening.

It had seemed to her that nothing was easier than to write a few
cordial phrases, which go directly from one heart to another. But how
difficult! A letter has no eyes, which fill with tears; no face, which
smiles both sadly and sweetly; no voice, which trembles; no hands to
stretch forth. You may read and understand a letter as you like; it is
merely black letters on paper as impassive as death.

Marynia had just torn the third sheet, when the face of Pan Plavitski,
as wrinkled as a roast apple, and with mustaches freshly dyed, showed
itself at the door partly open.

"Is Polanyetski not here?" inquired he.

"He is not, papa."

"But will he come this evening?"

"I do not know," answered she, with a sigh.

"If he comes, my child, tell him that I will return not later than an
hour from now; and that I wish to speak with him."

"And I too wish to speak with him," thought Marynia.

And when she had torn the third sheet she took the fourth and was
thinking whether to turn the whole quarrel into a jest, or simply to
beg his pardon. The jest might not please him; in the pardon there was
something warmer, but how difficult it was! If he had not fled, it
would have sufficed to extend her hand; but he flew out as if shot from
a sling, the irritable man, though so much loved.

And, raising her eyes, she began to work intently with her dark head,
when on a sudden the bell sounded in the entrance. Marynia's heart was
beating like a hammer; and through her head flew these questions, like
lightning,--

"Is it he? Is it not he?"

The door opened; it was he.

He came in with the look of a wolf, his head down, his face gloomy.
Evidently he was very uncertain how she would receive him; but she
sprang up, her heart beating like a bird's heart; her eyes radiant,
happy, touched greatly by his return; and, running to him, she laid her
hands on his shoulders.

"But how good! how nice! And do you know, I wanted to write to you."

Pan Stanislav, pressing her hands to his lips, was silent for some
time; at last he said,--

"You ought to give the order to throw me downstairs." In a rapture of
thankfulness he drew her up to him, kissed her lips, eyes, temples, and
hair, which became unbound in the pressure. In such moments it seemed
to him always that he would find everything that goes to make great and
perfect love. At last he released her and continued,--

"You are too good. Though that is better, it subdues me. I came to
beg your forgiveness, nothing more. I regained my senses at once. I
reproached myself for my last words, and I cannot tell you how sorry
I was. I walked along the street, thinking to see you in the window,
perhaps, and note from your face whether I might come in. After that I
could not restrain myself, and returned."

"I beg pardon; it was my fault. You see the torn paper; I wrote and
wrote."

He devoured with his eyes her hair, which she had arranged hastily.
With blushing face, from which joy was beaming, with eyes laughing from
happiness, she seemed to him more beautiful than ever, and desired as
never before.

Marynia noticed, too, that he was looking at her hair; and confusion
struggled with pure womanly coquetry. She had fastened it awkwardly
by design, so that the tresses were falling more and more on her
shoulders; while she said,--

"Do not look, or I'll go to my room."

"But that is my wealth," said Pan Stanislav; "and in my life I have
never seen anything like it."

He stretched his hands to her again, but she evaded.

"Not permitted, not permitted," said she; "as it is; I am ashamed. I
ought to have left you."

Her hair, however, came gradually to order; then both sat down and
conversed quietly, though looking into each other's eyes.

"And you wished really to write?" asked Pan Stanislav.

"You see the torn paper."

"I say that, in truth, you are too good."

She raised her eyes, and, looking at the shelf above the bureau, said,--

"Because the fault was mine. Yes; only mine."

And, judging that she could not be too magnanimous, she added after a
moment, blushing to her ears and dropping her eyes,--

"For, after all, the professor is correct in what he writes about
learning."

Pan Stanislav wanted to kneel down and kiss her feet. Her charm and
goodness not only disarmed him, but conquered him thoroughly.

"That I am annihilated is true," cried he, as if finishing some
unexpressed thought with words. "You conquer me utterly."

She began to shake her head joyously. "Ei! I don't know; I am such a
coward."

"You a coward? I will tell you an anecdote: In Belgium I knew two
young ladies named Wauters, who had a pet cat, a mild creature, mild
enough, it would seem, to be put to a wound. Afterward one of the young
ladies received a tame hare as a gift. What do you think? The cat was
so afraid that from terror he jumped on to every shelf and stove. One
day the ladies went to walk; all at once they remembered that the cat
was alone with the hare. 'But will not Matou hurt the hare?' 'Matou?
Matou is so terrified that he is ready to go out of his skin!' And
they walked on quietly. They came home an hour later. And guess what
had happened? They found only the ears of the hare. That is precisely
the relation of young ladies to us. They are afraid seemingly; but
afterward nothing is left of us but ears."

And Pan Stanislav began to laugh, and Marynia with him; after a while
he added,--

"I know that of me only ears will be left."

He did not tell the truth, however; for he felt that it would be
otherwise. Marynia too, after thinking a while, said,--

"No; I have not such a character."

"That is better too; for I will tell you sincerely what conclusions
I have drawn from my life observations: the greater egotism always
conquers the less."

"Or the greater love yields to the less," answered Marynia.

"That comes out the same. As to me, I confess that I should like to
hold some Herod, see, this way, in my hand" (here Pan Stanislav opened
his fingers and then closed them into a fist); "but with such a dove
as you, it is quite different. With you I think we shall have to fight
to restrain you from too much self-abnegation, too much personal
sacrifice. Such is your nature, and I know whom I take. For that matter
all say so, and even Mashko, who is no Solomon, said: 'She may be
unhappy with thee; thou with her, never.' And he is right. But I am
curious to know how Mashko will be for his wife. He has a firm hand."

"But is he loved much?"

"Not so much as awhile ago, when a certain young lady coquetted with
him."

"Yes; for he wasn't so wicked as a certain 'Pan Stas.'"

"That will be a wonderful marriage. She is not ill-looking, though she
is pale, and has red eyes. But Mashko marries for property. He admits
that she doesn't love him; and when that adventure with Gantovski
took place (he is brave, too), he was certain that those ladies would
choose the opportunity to break with him. Meanwhile it turned out
just the opposite; and imagine, Mashko is now alarmed again, because
everything moves as if on oil. It seems to him suspicious. There are
certain strange things there; there exists also, as it seems, a Pan
Kraslavski--God knows what there is not. The whole affair is stupid.
There will be no happiness in it,--at least, not such as I picture to
myself."

"And what do you picture to yourself?"

"Happiness in this,--to marry a reliable woman, like you, and see the
future clearly."

"But I think it is in this,--to be loved; but that is not enough yet."

"What more?"

"To be worthy of that love, and to--"

Here Marynia was unable for a time to find words, but at last she
said,--

"And to believe in a husband, and work with him."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Pan Stanislav was not mistaken. Everything went so favorably for
Mashko, Pani and Panna Kraslavski acted so admirably, that he was more
and more alarmed. At moments he laughed at this; and since he had had
no secret from Pan Stanislav for some time, he said one day, with
complete cynicism,--

"My dear, those are simply angels; but my hair stands on end, for
something is hidden in this."

"Better thank the Lord God."

"They are too ideal; they are faultless; they are even without vanity.
Yesterday, for example, I gave them to understand that I am an advocate
only because to my thinking sons of the best families should undertake
something in these times, be something. Guess what they answered?
That that is as good a position as any other; that every employment
is worthy in their eyes, provided it is work; and that only poor
and empty natures could be ashamed of work. They shot out so many
packages of commonplace that I wanted to answer with a sentence from
copy-books, such as 'Honor is a steep cliff,' or something of that
sort. Polanyetski, I tell thee there is something concealed there. I
thought that it was papa, but it is not papa. I have news of him: he
lives in Bordeaux; he calls himself De Langlais; and he has his own
domestic hearth, not so much legally, as numerously, surrounded, which
he maintains with a pension received from Pani Kraslavski."

"What harm is that to thee?"

"None whatever."

"If it is that way, they are unhappy women,--that is all."

"True; but if their income answers to the misfortune? Remember that
I have burdens. Besides, seest thou, if they are such women as they
pretend, and if, also, they are rich, I am ready to fall in love
really, and that would be stupid; if it appears that they have nothing,
or little, I am ready, also, to fall in love, and that would be still
more stupid. She has charms for me."

"No; that would be the one wise thing in every case. But think of
thyself, Mashko, a little of me and the Plavitskis. It is known to thee
that I have not the habit of being mild in those matters, and the dates
of payment are approaching."

"I'll fire up the boiler once more with credit. For that matter, thou
and they have a mortgage on Kremen. In a couple of days there will be
a betrothal party at Pani Kraslavski's, after which I hope to learn
something reliable."

Here Mashko began a monologue,--

"But that a positive man, such as I am, should go into a forest in this
way, passes belief. On the other hand, there is not a man, even among
those who know best how every one stands, who would let himself doubt
of Pani Kraslavski's property. And they are so noble!"

"Thy fears are probably baseless," interrupted Pan Stanislav, with
certain impatience. "But thou, my dear fellow, art not positive in any
sense, for thou hast been always pretending, and art pretending still,
instead of looking to that which gives thee bread."

A few days later the betrothal party took place in fact. Marynia was
there; for Pani Kraslavski, who liked Plavitski, whose relatives were
known to her, did not avoid association with him as she did with the
Bigiels. Mashko brought such of his acquaintances as had well-known
names. They had monocles on their eyes, and their hair parted in
the middle; for the greater part very young, and mainly not very
quick-witted. Among them were the five brothers Vyj, who were called
Mizio, Kizio, Bizio, Brelochek, and Tatus. They were nicknamed the five
sleeping brothers, since they felt the impulses of life in their legs
exclusively, and were active only in the carnival, but became perfectly
torpid, at least in a mental sense, during Lent. Bukatski loved them,
and amused himself with them. Baron Kot was there, who, because he had
heard something from some one of a certain ancient Kot of Dembna, added
always, when he was presented, "of Dembna," and who always answered
everything that was said to him with: "_Quelle drôle d'histoire!_"
Mashko was on the footing of _thou_ with all these, though he treated
them with a certain species of disregard, as well as Kopovski,--a young
man with a splendid ideal head, and also splendid eyes without thought.
Pan Stanislav and Kresovski represented the category of Mashko's more
clever friends. Pani Kraslavski had invited a number of ladies with
daughters, among whom the five brothers circled carelessly and coolly,
and whose maiden hearts fluttered at the approach of Kopovski, caring
less for his mental resemblance to Hamlet, resting on this,--that if
not he, his brain might be put into "a nutshell." A number of dignified
bald heads completed the company.

Panna Kraslavski was dressed in white; in spite of her red eyes, she
looked alluring. There was in her, indeed, a certain womanly charm,
resting on a wonderful, almost dreamy repose. She recalled somewhat the
figures of Perugini. At times she grew bright, like an alabaster lamp,
in which a flame flashes up on a sudden; after a while she paled again,
but paled not without charm. Dressed in a thin white robe, she seemed
more shapely than usual. Pan Stanislav, looking at her, thought that
she might have a heart which was dry enough, and a dry enough head,
but she could be a genteel wife, especially for Mashko, who valued
social gentility above everything else. Their manner toward each other
seemed like a cool and pale day, in which the sun does not burn, but
in which also a storm is not threatening. They were sitting at the end
of the drawing-room, not too near, but also not too far, from the rest
of the company; they occupied themselves with each other no more and
no less than was proper. In his conversation with her as much feeling
was evident as was required, but, above all, the wish to appear a
"correct" betrothed; she paid him on her part in the same coin. They
smiled at each other in a friendly way. He, as the future leader and
head of the house, spoke more than she; sometimes they looked into each
other's eyes,--in a word, they formed the most correct and exemplary
couple of betrothed people that could be imagined, in the society
sense of the term. "I should not have held out," said Pan Stanislav to
himself. Suddenly he remembered that while she was sitting there in
conventional repose, white, smiling, the poor little doctor, who could
not "tear his soul from her," was in equal repose somewhere between
the tropics turning to dust, under the ground, forgotten, as if he had
never existed; and anger bore him away. Not only did he feel contempt
for the heart of Mashko's betrothed, but that repose of hers seemed
now bad taste to him,--a species of spiritual deadness, which once had
been fashionable, and which, since they saw in it something demonic,
the poets had struck with their thunderbolts, and which, in time, had
grown vulgar, and dropped to be moral nonentity and folly. "First of
all, she is a goose, and, moreover, a goose with no heart," thought
Pan Stanislav. At that moment Mashko's alarm at the noble conduct of
those ladies grew clear to him to such a degree that Mashko rose in his
esteem as a man of acuteness.

Then he fell to comparing his own betrothed with Panna Kraslavski,
and said to himself with great satisfaction, "Marynia is a different
species altogether." He felt that he was resting mentally while looking
at her. In so much as the other seemed, as it were, an artificial
plant, reared, not in broad fresh currents of air, but under glass,
in that much did there issue from this one life and warmth, and still
the comparison came out to the advantage of Marynia, even in respect
to society. Pan Stanislav did not overlook altogether "distinction,"
so-called, understanding that, if not always, it frequently answers to
a certain mental finish, especially in women. Looking now at one, now
at the other, he came to the conviction that that finish which Panna
Kraslavski had was something acquired and enslaving, with Marynia
it was innate. In the one it was a garment thrown on outside; in
the other, the soul,--a kind of natural trait in a species ennobled
through long ages of culture. Taking from Bukatski's views as many
as he needed,--that is, as many as were to the point,--Pan Stanislav
remembered that he had said frequently that women, without reference
to their origin, are divided into patricians, who have culture,
principles, and spiritual needs, which have entered the blood, and
parvenues, who dress in them, as in mantillas, to go visiting. At
present, while looking at the noble profile of Marynia, Pan Stanislav
thought, with the vanity of a little townsman who is marrying a
princess, that he was taking a patrician in the high sense of the word;
and, besides, a very beautiful patrician.

Frequently women need only some field, and a little luck, to bloom
forth. Marynia, who seemed almost ugly to Pan Stanislav when he was
returning from the burial of Litka, astonished him now, at times, with
her beauty. Near her Panna Kraslavski seemed like a faded robe near a
new one; and if the fortune of Panna Plavitski had been on a level with
her looks, she would have passed, beyond doubt, for a beauty. As it
was, the five brothers, putting their glasses on their equine noses,
looked at her with a certain admiration; and Baron Kot, of Dembna,
declared confidentially that her betrothal was real luck, for had it
not taken place, who knows but he might have rushed in.

Pan Stanislav could note also that evening one trait of his own
character which he had not suspected,--jealousy. Since he was convinced
that Marynia was a perfectly reliable woman, who might be trusted
blindly, that jealousy was simply illogical. In his time he had been
jealous of Mashko, and that could be understood; but now he could
not explain why Kopovski, for example, with his head of an archangel
and his brains of a bird, could annoy him, just because he sat next
to Marynia, and doubtless was asking her more or less pertinent
questions, to which she was answering more or less agreeably. At first
he reproached himself. "Still, it would be difficult to ask her not to
speak to him!" Afterward he found that Marynia turned to Kopovski too
frequently, and answered too agreeably. At supper, while sitting next
her, he was silent and irritated; and when she asked the reason, he
answered most inappropriately,--

"I have no wish to spoil the impression which Pan Kopovski produced on
you."

But she was pleased that he was jealous; contracting the corners of her
mouth to suppress laughter, and looking at him sedately, she answered,--

"Do you find, too, that there is something uncommon in Pan Kopovski?"

"Of course, of course! When he walks the streets even, it seems that he
is carrying his head into fresh air, lest the moths might devour it."

The corners of Marynia's mouth bore the test, but her eyes laughed
evidently; at last, unable to endure, she said, in a low voice,--

"Outrageously jealous!"

"I? Not the least!"

"Well, I will give you an extract from our conversation. You know that
yesterday there was a case of catalepsy during the concert; to-day
they were talking of that near us; then, among other things, I asked
Pan Kopovski if he had seen the cataleptic person. Do you know what he
answered? 'Each of us may have different convictions.' Well, now, isn't
he uncommon?"

Pan Stanislav was pacified, and began to laugh.

"But I tell you that he simply doesn't understand what is said to him,
and answers anything."

They passed the rest of the evening with each other in good agreement.
At the time of parting, when the Plavitskis, having a carriage with
seats for only two persons, were unable to take Pan Stanislav, Marynia
turned to him and inquired,--

"Will the cross, whimsical man come to-morrow to dine with us?"

"He will, for he loves," answered Pan Stanislav, covering her feet with
the robe.

She whispered into his ear, as it were great news, "And I too."

And although he at the moment of speaking was perfectly sincere, she
spoke more truth. Mashko conducted Pan Stanislav home. On the road they
talked of the reception. Mashko said that before the arrival of guests
he had tried to speak to Pani Kraslavski of business, but had not
succeeded.

"There was a moment," said he, "when I thought to put the question
plainly, dressing it of course in the most delicate form. But I was
afraid. Finally, why have I doubts of the dower of my betrothed? Only
because those ladies treat me with more consideration than I expected.
As a humor, that is very good; but I fear to push matters too far, for
suppose that my fears turn out vain, suppose they have money really,
and are incensed because my curiosity is too selfish. It is necessary
to count with this also, for I may be wrecked at the harbor."

"Well, then," answered Pan Stanislav, "admit this, and for that matter
it is likely that they have; but if it should turn out that they
have not, what then? Hast a plan ready? Wilt thou break with Panna
Kraslavski, or wilt thou marry her?"

"I will not break with her in any case, for I should not gain by it. If
my marriage does not take place, I shall be a bankrupt. But if it does,
I will state my financial position precisely, and suppose that Panna
Kraslavski will break with me."

"But if she does not, and has no money?"

"I shall love her, and come to terms with my creditors. I shall cease
to 'pretend,' as thy phrase is, and try to win bread for us both; I am
not a bad advocate, as thou knowest."

"That is fairly good," answered Pan Stanislav, "but that does not
pacify me touching the Plavitskis and myself."

"Thou and they are in a better position than others, for ye have a lien
on Kremen. In a given case thou wilt take everything in thy firm grasp,
and squeeze out something. It is worse for those who have trusted my
word; and I tell thee to thy eyes that I am concerned more for them. I
had, and I have great credit even now. That is my tender point. But if
they give me time, I will come out somehow. If I had a little happiness
at home, and a motive there for labor--"

They came now to Pan Stanislav's house, so Mashko did not finish his
thought. At the moment of parting, however, he said suddenly,--

"Listen to me. In thy eyes I am somewhat crooked; I am much less so
than seems to thee. I have _pretended_, as thou sayst, it is true! I
had to wriggle out, like an eel, and in those wrigglings I slipped
sometimes from the beaten road. But I am tired, and tell thee plainly
that I wish a little happiness, for I have not had it. Therefore I
wanted to marry thy betrothed, though she is without property. As to
Panna Kraslavski, dost thou know that there are moments when I should
prefer that she had nothing, but, to make up, that she would not drop
me when she knows that I too have nothing. I say this sincerely--and
now good-night."

"Well," said Pan Stanislav to himself, "this is something new in
Mashko." And he entered the gate. Standing at the door, he was
astonished to hear the piano in his apartments. The servant said that
Bigiel had been waiting two hours for him.

Pan Stanislav was alarmed, but thought that if something unfavorable
had caused his presence, he would not play on the piano. In fact, it
turned out that Bigiel was in haste merely to get Pan Stanislav's
signature for an affair which had to be finished early next morning.

"Thou mightest have left the paper, and gone to bed," said Pan
Stanislav.

"I slept awhile on thy sofa, then sat at the piano. Once I played on
the piano as well as on the violin, but now my fingers are clumsy. Thy
Marynia plays probably; such music in the house is a nice thing."

Pan Stanislav laughed with a sincere, well-wishing laugh.

"My Marynia? My Marynia possesses the evangelical talent: her left hand
does not know what her right hand is doing. Poor dear woman! She has no
pretensions; and she plays only when I beg her to do so."

"Thou art as it were laughing at her," said Bigiel; "but only those who
are in love laugh in that way."

"Because I am in love most completely. At least it seems so now to me;
and in general I must say that it seems so to me oftener and oftener.
Wilt thou have tea?"

"Yes. Thou hast come from Pani Kraslavski's?"

"I have."

"How is Mashko? Will he struggle to shore?"

"I parted with him a moment ago. He came with me to the gate. He says
things at times that I should not expect from him."

Pan Stanislav, glad to have some one to talk with, and feeling the need
of intimate converse, began to tell what he had heard from Mashko; and
how much he was astonished at finding a man of romantic nature under
the skin of a person of his kind.

"Mashko is not a bad man," said Bigiel. "He is only on the road to
various evasions; and the cause of that is his vanity and respect for
appearances. But, on the other hand, that respect for appearances saves
him from final fall. As to the man of romance, which thou hast found in
him--"

Here Bigiel cut off the end of a cigar, lighted it with great
deliberation, wrinkling his brows at the same time, and, sitting down
comfortably, continued,--

"Bukatski would have given on that subject ten ironical paradoxes about
our society. Now something stuck in my head that he told me, when he
attacked us because always we love some one or something. It seems to
him that this is foolish and purposeless; but I see in this a great
trait. It is necessary to become something in the world; and what have
we? Money we have not; intellect, so-so; the gift of making our way
in a position, not greatly; management, little. We have in truth this
yet--that almost involuntarily, through some general disposition, we
love something or somebody; and if we do not love, we feel the need
of love. Thou knowest that I am a man of deliberation and a merchant,
hence I speak soberly. I call attention to this because of Bukatski.
Mashko, for instance, in some other country, would be a rogue from
under a dark star; and I know many such. But here even beneath the
trickster thou canst scratch to the man; and that is simple, for, in
the last instance, while a man has some spark in his breast yet, he is
not a beast utterly; and with us he has the spark, precisely for this
reason, that he loves something."

"Thou bringest Vaskovski to my mind. What thou art saying is not far
from his views concerning the mission of the youngest of the Aryans."

"What is Vaskovski to me? I say what I think. I know one thing: take
that from us, and we should fly apart, like a barrel without hoops."

"Well, listen to what I will tell thee. This is a thing decided in my
mind rather long since. To love, or not to love some one, is a personal
question; but I understand that it is needful to love something in
life. I too have meditated over this. After the death of that child,
I felt that the devil had taken certain sides of me; sometimes I feel
that yet. Not to-day; but there are times--how can I tell thee?--times
of ebb, exhaustion, doubts. And if, in spite of this, I marry, it is
because I understand that it is necessary to have a living and strong
foundation under a more general love."

"For that, and not for that," answered Bigiel the inexorable in
judgment, "for thou are marrying not at all from purely mental reasons.
Thou art taking a comely and honest young woman, to whom thou art
attracted; and do not persuade thyself that it is otherwise, or thou
wilt begin to pretend. My dear friend, every man has these doubts
before marrying. I, as thou seest, am no philosopher; but ten times
a day I asked myself before marriage, if I loved my future wife well
enough, if I loved her as was necessary, had I not too little soul in
the matter, and too many doubts? God knows what! Afterward I married a
good woman, and it was well for us. It will be well for you too, if ye
take things simply; but that endless searching in the mind and looking
for certain secrets of the heart is folly, God knows."

"Maybe it is folly. I too have no great love for lying on my back and
analyzing from morn in till night; but I cannot help seeing facts."

"What facts?"

"Such facts, for example, as this, that my feeling is not what it was
at first. I think that it will be; I acknowledge that it is going to
that. I marry in spite of these observations, as if they did not exist;
but I make them."

"Thou art free to do so."

"And see what I think besides: still it is necessary that the windows
of a house should look out on the sun; otherwise it will be cold in the
dwelling."

"Thou hast said well," answered Bigiel.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Meanwhile winter began to break; the end of Lent was approaching, and
with it the time of marriage for Pan Stanislav, as well as Mashko.
Bukatski, invited as a groomsman to the former, wrote to him among
other things as follows,--

     "To thrust forth the all-creative energy from its universal
     condition,--that is, from a condition of perfect repose,--and
     force it by means of marriages concluded on earth to incarnate
     itself in more or less squalling particulars which require cradles
     and which amuse themselves by holding the great toe in the mouth,
     is a crime. Still I will come, because stoves are better with you
     than in this place."

In fact, he came a week before the holidays, and brought as a gift to
Pan Stanislav a sheet of parchment ornamented splendidly with something
in the style of a grave hour-glass, on which was the inscription,
"Stanislav Polanyetski, after a long and grievous bachelorhood."

Pan Stanislav, whom the parchment pleased, took it next day about noon
to Marynia. He forgot, however, that it was Sunday, and felt, as it
were, disappointed, at finding Marynia with her hat on.

"Are you going out?" inquired he.

"Yes. To church. To-day is Sunday."

"Ah, Sunday! True. But I thought that we should sit here together. It
would be so agreeable."

She raised her calm blue eyes to him, and said with simplicity, "But
the service of God?"

Pan Stanislav received these words at once as he would have received
any other, not foreseeing that, in the spiritual process which he was
to pass through later on, they would play a certain rôle by reason of
their directness, and said as if repeating mechanically,--

"You say the service of God. Very well! I have time; let us go
together."

Marynia received this offer with great satisfaction.

"I am the happier," said she, on the way, "the more I love God."

"That, too, is the mark of a good nature; some persons think of God
only as a terror."

And in the church that came again to his mind of which he had thought
during his first visit to Kremen, when he was at the church in Vantory,
with old Plavitski: "Destruction takes all philosophies and systems,
one after another; but Mass is celebrated as of old." It seemed to
him that in that there was something which passed comprehension. He
who, because of Litka, had come in contact with death in a manner most
painful, returned to those dark problems whenever he happened to be in
a cemetery, or a church at Mass, or in any circumstances whatever in
which something took place which had no connection with the current
business of life, but was shrouded in that future beyond the grave. He
was struck by this thought,--how much is done in this life for that
future; and how, in spite of all philosophizing and doubt, people live
as if that future were entirely beyond question; how much of petty
personal egotisms are sacrificed for it; how many philanthropic deeds
are performed; how asylums, hospitals, retreats, churches are built,
and all on an account payable beyond the grave only.

He was struck still more by another thought,--that to be reconciled
with life really, it is necessary to be reconciled with death
first; and that without faith in something beyond the grave this
reconciliation is simply impossible. But if you have faith the question
drops away, as if it had never existed. "Let the devils take mourning;
let us rejoice;" for if this is true, what more can be desired? Is
there before one merely the view of some new existence, in the poorest
case, wonderfully curious,--even that certainty amounts to peace and
quiet. Pan Stanislav had an example of that, then, in Marynia. Because
she was somewhat short-sighted, she held her head bent over the book;
but when at moments she raised it, he saw a face so calm, so full of
something like that repose which a flower has, and so serene, that
it was simply angelic. "That is a happy woman, and she will be happy
always," said he to himself. "And, besides, she has sense, for if, on
the opposite side, there were at least certainty, there would be also
that satisfaction which truth gives; but to torture one's self for the
sake of various marks of interrogation is pure folly."

On the way home, Pan Stanislav, thinking continually of this expression
of Marynia's, said,--

"In the church you looked like some profile of Fra Angelico; you had a
face which was indeed happy."

"For I am happy at present. And do you know why? Because I am
better than I was. I felt at one time offended in heart, and I was
dissatisfied; I had no hope before me, and all these put together
formed such suffering that it was terrible. It is said that misfortune
ennobles chosen souls, but I am not a chosen soul. For that matter,
misfortune may ennoble, but suffering, offence, ill-will, destroy. They
are like poison."

"Did you hate me much then?"

Marynia looked at him and answered, "I hated you so much that for whole
days I thought of you only."

"Mashko has wit; he described this once thus to me: 'She would rather
hate you than love me.'"

"Oi! that I would rather, is true."

Thus conversing, they reached the house. Pan Stanislav had time then to
unroll his parchment hour-glass and show it to Marynia; but the idea
did not please her. She looked on marriage not only from the point
of view of the heart, but of religion. "With such things there is no
jesting," said she; and after a while she confessed to Pan Stanislav
that she was offended with Bukatski.

After dinner Bukatski came. During those few months of his stay in
Italy he had become still thinner, which was a proof against the
efficacy of "chianti" for catarrh of the stomach. His nose, with its
thinness, reminded one of a knife-edge; his humorous face, smiling with
irony, had become, as it were, porcelain, and was no larger than the
fist of a grown man. He was related both to Pan Stanislav and Marynia;
hence he said what he pleased in their presence. From the threshold
almost, he declared to them that, in view of the increasing number of
mental deviations in the world at present, he could only regret, but
did not wonder, that they were affianced. He had come, it is true, in
the hope that he would be able to save them, but he saw now that he was
late, and that nothing was left but resignation. Marynia was indignant
on hearing this; but Pan Stanislav, who loved him, said,--

"Preserve thy conceit for the wedding speech, for thou must make one;
and now tell us how our professor is."

"He has grown disturbed in mind seriously," replied Bukatski.

"Do not jest in that way," said Marynia.

"And so much without cause," added Pan Stanislav.

But Bukatski continued, with equal seriousness: "Professor Vaskovski
is disturbed in mind, and here are my proofs for you: First, he
walks through Rome without a cap, or rather, he walked, for he is in
Perugia at present; second, he attacked a refined young English lady,
and proved to her that the English are Christians in private life
only,--that the relations of England to Ireland are not Christian;
third, he is printing a pamphlet, in which he shows that the mission of
reviving and renewing history with the spirit of Christ is committed to
the youngest of the Aryans. Confess that these are proofs."

"We knew these ways before his departure; if nothing more threatens the
professor, we hope to see him in good health."

"He does not think of returning."

Pan Stanislav took out his note-book, wrote some words with a pencil,
and, giving them to Marynia, said,--

"Read, and tell me if that is good."

"If thou write in my presence, I withdraw," said Bukatski.

"No, no! this is no secret."

Marynia became as red as a cherry from delight, and, as if not wishing
to believe her eyes, asked,--

"Is that true? It is not."

"That depends on you," answered Pan Stanislav.

"Ah, Pan Stas! I did not even dream of that. I must tell papa. I must."

And she ran out of the room.

"If I were a poet, I would hang myself," said Bukatski.

"Why?"

"For if a couple of words, jotted down by the hand of a partner in the
house of Bigiel and Company, can produce more impression than the most
beautiful sonnet, it is better, to be a miller boy than a poet."

But Marynia, in the rapture of her joy, forgot the notebook, so Pan
Stanislav showed it to Bukatski, saying, "Read."

Bukatski read:--

     "After the wedding Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples. Is that well?"

"Then it's a journey to Italy?"

"Yes. Imagine, she has not been abroad in her life; and Italy has
always seemed to her an enchanted land, which she has not even dreamed
of seeing. That is an immense delight for her; and what the deuce
wonder is there, if I think out a little pleasure for her?"

"Love and Italy! O God, how many times Thou hast looked on that! All
that love is as old as the world."

"Not true! Fall in love, and see if thou'lt find something new in it."

"My beloved friend, the question is not in this, that I do not love
yet, but in this,--that I love no longer. Years ago I dug that sphinx
out of the sand, and it is no longer a riddle to me."

"Bukatski, get married."

"I cannot. My sight is too faint, and my stomach too weak."

"What hindrance in that?"

"Oh, seest thou, a woman is like a sheet of paper. An angel writes on
one side, a devil on the other; the paper is cut through, the words
blend, and such a hash is made that I can neither read nor digest it."

"To live all thy life on conceits!"

"I shall die, as well as thou, who art marrying. It seems to us that we
think of death, but it thinks more of us."

At that moment Marynia came in with her father, who embraced Pan
Stanislav, and said,--

"Marynia tells me that 't is thy wish to go to Italy after the wedding."

"If my future lady will consent."

"Thy future lady will not only consent," answered Marynia, "but she has
lost her head from delight, and wants to jump through the room, as if
she were ten years of age."

To which Plavitski answered, "If the cross of a solitary old man can be
of use in your distant journey, I will bless you."

And he raised his eyes and his hand toward heaven, to the unspeakable
delight of Bukatski; but Marynia drew down the raised hand, and,
kissing it, said with laughter,--

"There will be time for that, papa; we are going away only after the
wedding."

"And, speaking plainly," added Bukatski, "then there will be a buying
of tickets, and giving baggage to be weighed, and starting,--nothing
more."

To this Plavitski turned to the cynic, and said, with a certain
unction,--

"Have you come to this,--that you look on the blessing of a lonely old
man and a father as superfluous?"

Bukatski, instead of an answer, embraced Plavitski, kissed him near the
waistcoat, and said,--

"But would the 'lonely old man' not play piquet, so as to let those two
mad heads talk themselves out?"

"But with a rubicon?" asked Plavitski.

"With anything you like." Then he turned to the young couple: "Hire me
as a guide to Italy."

"I do not think of it," answered Pan Stanislav. "I have been in Belgium
and France, no farther. Italy I know not; but I want to see what will
interest us, not what may interest thee. I have seen men such as thou
art, and I know that through over-refinement they go so far that they
love not art, but their own knowledge of it."

Here Pan Stanislav continued the talk with Marynia.

"Yes, they go so far that they lose the feeling of great, simple art,
and seek something to occupy their sated taste, and exhibit their
critical knowledge. They do not see trees; they search simply for
knots. The greatest things which we are going to admire do not concern
them, but some of the smallest things, of which no one has heard; they
dig names out of obscurity, occupy themselves in one way or another,
persuade themselves and others that things inferior and of less use
surpass in interest the better and more perfect. Under his guidance we
might not see whole churches, but we might see various things which
would have to be looked at through cracks. I call all this surfeit,
abuse, over-refinement, and we are simply people."

Marynia looked at him with pride, as if she would say, "Oh, that is
what is called speaking!" Her pride increased when Bukatski said,--

"Thou art quite right."

But she was indignant when he added,--

"And if thou wert not right, I could not win before the tribunal."

"I beg pardon," said Marynia; "I am not blinded in any way."

"But I am not an art critic at all."

"On the contrary, you are."

"If I am, then, I declare that knowledge embraces a greater number of
details, but does not prevent a love of great art; and believe not Pan
Stanislav, but me."

"No; I prefer to believe him."

"That was to be foreseen."

Marynia looked now at one, now at the other, with a somewhat anxious
face. Meanwhile Plavitski came with cards. The betrothed walked through
the rooms hand in hand; Bukatski began to be wearied, and grew more and
more so. Toward the end of the evening the humor which animated him
died out; his small face became still smaller, his nose sharper, and
he looked like a dried leaf. When he went out with Pan Stanislav, the
latter inquired,--

"Somehow thou wert not so vivacious?"

"I am like a machine: while I have fuel within, I move; but in the
evening, when the morning supply is exhausted, I stop."

Pan Stanislav looked at him carefully. "What is thy fuel?"

"There are various kinds of coal. Come to me: I will give thee a cup of
good coffee; that will enliven us."

"Listen! this is a delicate question, but some one told me that thou
hast been taking morphine this long time."

"For a very short time," answered Bukatski; "if thou could only know
what horizons it opens."

"And it kills--Fear God!"

"And kills! Tell me sincerely, has this ever occurred to thee, that it
is possible to have a yearning for death?"

"No; I understand just the opposite."

"But I will give thee neither morphine nor opium," said Bukatski, at
length; "only good coffee and a bottle of honest Bordeaux. That will be
an innocent orgy."

After some time they arrived at Bukatski's. It was the dwelling of a
man of real wealth, seemingly, somewhat uninhabited, but full of small
things connected with art and pictures and drawings. Lamps were burning
in a number of rooms, for Bukatski could not endure darkness, even in
time of sleep.

The "Bordeaux" was found promptly, and under the machine for coffee a
blue flame was soon burning. Bukatski stretched himself on the sofa,
and said, all at once,--

"Perhaps thou wilt not admit, since thou seest me such a filigree, that
I have no fear of death."

"This one thing I have at times admitted, that thou art jesting and
jesting, deceiving thyself and others, while really the joke is not in
thee, and this is all artificial."

"The folly of people amuses me somewhat."

"But if thou think thyself wise, why arrange life so vainly?" Here Pan
Stanislav looked around on bric-à-brac, on pictures, and added, "In all
this surrounding thou art still living vainly."

"Vainly enough."

"Thou art of those who _pretend_. What a disease in this society! Thou
art posing, and that is the whole question."

"Sometimes. But, for that matter, it becomes natural."

Under the influence of "Bordeaux" Bukatski grew animated gradually, and
became more talkative, though cheerfulness did not return to him.

"Seest thou," said he, "one thing,--I do not pretend. All which I
myself could tell, or which another could tell me, I have thought out,
and said long since to my soul. I lead the most stupid and the vainest
life possible. Around me is immense nothingness, which I fear, and
which I fence out with this lumber which thou seest in this room; I do
this so as to fear less. Not to fear death is another thing, for after
death there are neither feelings nor thoughts. I shall become, then,
a part also of nothingness; but to feel it, while one is alive, to
know of it, to give account to one's self of it, as God lives, there
can be nothing more abject. Moreover, the condition of my health is
really bad, and takes from me every energy. I have no fuel in myself,
therefore I add it. There is less in this of posing and pretending than
thou wilt admit. When I have given myself fuel, I take life in its
humorous aspect; I follow the example of the sick man, who lies on the
side on which he lies with most comfort. For me there is most comfort
thus. That the position is artificial, I admit; every other, however,
would be more painful. And see, the subject is exhausted."

"If thou would undertake some work."

"Give me peace. To begin with, I know a multitude of things, but I
don't understand anything; second, I am sick; third, tell a paralytic
to walk a good deal when he cannot use his legs. The subject is
exhausted! Drink that wine there, and let us talk about thee. That is a
good lady, Panna Plavitski; and thou art doing well to marry her. What
I said to thee there in the daytime does not count. She is a good lady,
and loves thee."

Here Bukatski, enlivened and roused evidently by the wine, began to
speak hurriedly.

"What I say in the daytime does not count. Now it is night; let us
drink wine, and a moment of more sincerity comes. Dost wish more wine,
or coffee? I like this odor; one should mix Mocha and Ceylon in equal
parts. Now comes a time of more sincerity! Knowest thou what I think
at bottom? I have no clear idea of what happiness fame may give, for I
do not possess it; and since the Ephesian temple is fired, there is no
opening to fame before me. I admit, however, so, to myself, that the
amount of it might be eaten by a mouse, not merely on an empty stomach,
but after a good meal in a pantry. But I know what property is for I
have a little of it; I know what travelling is, for I have wandered;
I know what freedom is, for I am free; I know what women are--oi,
devil take it!--too well, and I know what books are. Besides, in this
chamber, I have a few pictures, a few drawings, a little porcelain. Now
listen to what I will say to thee: All this is nothing; all is vanity,
folly, dust, in comparison with one heart which loves. This is the
result of my observations; only I have come to it at the end, while
normal men reach it at the beginning."

Here he began to stir the coffee feverishly with a spoon; and Pan
Stanislav, who was very lively, sprang up and said,--

"And thou, O beast! what didst thou say some months since,--that thou
wert going to Italy because there no one loved thee, and thou didst
love no one? Dost remember? Thou'lt deny, perhaps."

"But what did I say this afternoon to thy betrothed? That thou and she
had gone mad; and now I say that thou art doing well. Dost wish logic
of me? To talk and to say something are two different things. But now I
am more sincere, for I have drunk half a bottle of wine."

Pan Stanislav began to walk through the room and repeat: "But, as God
lives, it is fabulous! See what the root of the matter is, and what
they all say when cornered."

"To love is good, but there is something still better,--that is, to
be loved. There is nothing above that! As to me, I would give for it
all these; but it is not worth while to talk of me. Life is a comedy
badly written, and without talent: even that which pains terribly is
sometimes like a poor melodrama; but in life, if there be anything
good, it is to be loved. Imagine to thyself, I have not known that, and
thou hast found it without seeking."

"Do not say so, for thou knowest not how it came to me."

"I know; Vaskovski told me. That, however, is all one. The question is
this,--thou hast known how to value it."

"Well, what dost thou wish? I understand that I am loved a little;
hence I marry, and that is the end of the matter."

Thereupon Bukatski put his hand on Pan Stanislav's shoulder.

"No, Polanyetski; I am a fool in respect to myself, but not a bad
observer of what is passing around me. That is not the end, but the
beginning. Most men say, as thou hast, 'I marry,--that is the end;' and
most men deceive themselves."

"That philosophy I do not understand."

"But thou seest what the question is? It is not enough to take a woman;
a man should give himself to her also, and should feel that he does so.
Dost understand?"

"Not greatly."

"Well, thou art feigning simplicity. She should not only feel herself
owned, but an owner. A soul for a soul! otherwise a life may be lost.
Marriages are good or bad. Mashko's will be bad for twenty reasons, and
among others for this, of which I wish to speak."

"He is of another opinion. But, as God lives, it is a pity that thou
art not married, since thou hast such a sound understanding of how
married life should be."

"If to understand and to act according to that understanding were the
same, there would not be the various, very various events, from which
the bones ache in all of us. For that matter, imagine me marrying."

Here Bukatski began to laugh with his thin little voice. Joyfulness
returned to him on a sudden, and with it the vision of things on the
comic side.

"Thou wilt be ridiculous; but what should I be? Something to split
one's sides at. What a moment that is! Thou wilt see in two weeks. For
instance, how thou wilt dress for church. Here, love, beating of the
heart, solemn thoughts, a new epoch in life; there, the gardener, with
flowers, a dress-coat, lost studs, the tying of a cravat, the drawing
on of patent-leather boots,--all at one time, one chaos, one confusion.
Deliver me, angels of paradise! I have compassion on thee, my dear
friend; and do thou, I beg, not take seriously what I say. There is a
new moon now, and I have a mania for uttering commonplace sentiment at
the new moon. All folly!--the new moon, nothing more! I have grown as
soft-hearted as a ewe who has lost her first lamb; and may the cough
split me, if I haven't uttered commonplace!"

But Pan Stanislav attacked him: "I have seen many vain things; but
knowest thou what seems to me vainest in thee and those like thee? Thou
and they, who absolve yourselves from everything, recognize nothing
above you, and fear like fire every honest truth, for the one reason
that some one might sometime declare it. How bad this is words cannot
tell. As to thee, my dear friend, thou wert sincerer a while since than
now. Again, thou'rt a poodle, dancing on two legs; but I tell thee that
ten like thee could not show me that I have not won a great prize in
the lottery."

He took farewell of Bukatski with a certain anger; on the road home,
however, he grew pacified and repeated continually: "See where the
truth is; see what Mashko, and even Bukatski, says, when ready to be
sincere; but I have won simply a great prize, and I will not waste what
I have won."

When he entered his lodgings and saw Litka's photograph, he exclaimed,
"My dearest kitten!" Up to the moment of sleeping he thought of Marynia
with pleasure, and with the calmness of a man who feels that some great
problem of life has been settled decisively, and settled well. For, in
spite of Bukatski's words, he was convinced that, since he was going to
marry, all would be decided and ended by that one act.

CHAPTER XXX.

The "catastrophe," as Bukatski called it, came at last. Pan Stanislav
learned by experience that if in life there are many days in which a
man cannot seize his own thoughts, to such belong above all the day
of his marriage. At times a number of these thoughts circled in his
brain at one moment, and were so indefinite, that, speaking accurately,
they were rather unconscious impressions than thoughts. He felt
that a new epoch in life was beginning, that he was assuming great
obligations which he ought to fulfil conscientiously and seriously;
and at the same time, but exactly at the same time, he wondered that
the carriage wasn't coming yet, and expressed his astonishment in the
form of a threat: "If those scoundrels are late, I'll break their
necks for them." At moments a solemn, and, as it were, noble fear of
that future for which he had assumed responsibility was mastering
him; he felt within him a certain elevation, and in this feeling of
elevation he began to lather his beard, and he thought whether on such
an exceptional day it would not be exceptionally worth while to bring
in a barber to his somewhat dishevelled hair. Marynia at the same time
was at the basis of all his impressions. He saw her, as if present.
He thought: "At this moment, she too is dressing, she is standing in
her chamber in front of the mirror, she is talking to her maid, her
soul is flying toward me, and her heart beats unquietly." That instant
tenderness seized him and he said to himself, "But have no fear, honest
soul, for, as God lives, I will not wrong thee;" and he saw himself in
the future, kind, considerate, so that he began to look with a certain
emotion at the patent-leather boots standing near the armchair, on
which his wedding-suit was lying. He repeated from time to time too,
"If to marry, then marry!" He said to himself that he was stupid to
hesitate, for another such Marynia there was not on earth; he felt
that he loved her, and thought at the same time that the weather was
not bad, but that perhaps rain might fall; that it might be cold in
the Church of the Visitation; that in an hour he would be kneeling
by Marynia, that a white necktie is safer knotted than pinned; that
marriage is indeed the most important ceremony in life; that there is
in it something sacred, and that one must not lose one's head anyhow,
for in an hour it will be over; to-morrow they will depart, and then
the normal quiet life of husband and wife will begin.

These thoughts, however, flew away at moments like a flock of sparrows,
into which some one has fired from behind a hedge suddenly, and it grew
empty in Pan Stanislav's head. Then phrases of this kind came to his
lips mechanically: "The eighth of April--to-morrow will be Wednesday!
to-morrow will be Wednesday! my watch! to-morrow will be Wednesday!"
Later he roused himself, repeated, "One must be an idiot!" and the
scattered birds flew back again in a whole flock to his head, and began
to whirl around in it.

Meanwhile Abdulski, the agent of the house of Polanyetski, Bigiel, and
Company came in. He was to be the second groomsman, with Bukatski as
first. Being a Tartar by origin and a man of dark complexion, though
good-looking, he seemed so handsome in the dress-coat and white cravat
that Pan Stanislav expressed the hope that surely he would marry soon.
Abdulski answered,--

"The soul would to paradise;" then he commenced a pantomime, intended
to represent the counting of money, and began to speak of the Bigiels.
All their children wanted to be at the marriage. The Bigiels decided
to take only the two elder ones; from this arose disagreements and
difference of opinion, expressed on Pani Bigiel's side by means of
slaps. Pan Stanislav, who was a great children's man, was exceedingly
indignant at this, and said,--

"I'll play a trick on the Bigiels. Have they gone already?"

"They were just going."

"That is well; I will run in there on the way to Plavitski's, take all
the children, and pour them out before Pani Bigiel and my affianced."

Abdulski expressed the conviction that Pan Stanislav would not do so;
but he merely confirmed him thereby in his plan all the more. In fact,
when he entered the carriage, they drove for the children directly. The
governess, knowing Pan Stanislav's relations with the family, dared
not oppose him; and half an hour later, Pan Stanislav, to the great
consternation of Pani Bigiel, entered Plavitski's lodgings at the head
of a whole flock of little Bigiels, in their every-day clothing, with
collars awry, hair disarranged for the greater part, and faces half
happy, half frightened, and, hurrying up to Marynia, he said, kissing
her hands already enclosed in white gloves,--

"They wanted to wrong the children. Say that I did well."

This proof of his kind heart entertained and pleased Marynia; hence
she was glad from her whole soul to see the children, and even glad
of this,--that the assembled guests considered her future husband an
original,--and glad because Pani Bigiel, straightening the crooked
collars hurriedly, said in her worry,--

"What's to be done with such a madman?"

Somewhat of this opinion too was old Plavitski. But Pan Stanislav and
Marynia were occupied for the moment with each other so exclusively
that everything else vanished from their eyes. The hearts of both
beat a little unquietly. He looked at her with a certain admiration.
All in white, from her slippers to her gloves, with a green wreath on
her head, and a long veil, she seemed to him other than usual. There
was in her something uncommonly solemn, as in the dead Litka. Pan
Stanislav did not make, it is true, that comparison; but he felt that
this white Marynia, if not more remote from him, made him hesitate more
than she of yesterday, arrayed in her ordinary costume. Withal she
seemed less comely than usual, for the wedding wreath is becoming to
women only exceptionally, and, besides, disquiet and emotion reddened
her face; which, with the white robe, seemed still redder than it
was in reality. But a wonderful thing! Just this circumstance moved
Pan Stanislav. In his heart, rather kind by its nature, there rose a
certain feeling resembling compassion or tenderness. He understood
that Marynia's heart must be panting then like a captive bird, and he
began to calm her; to speak to her with such good and kind words that
he was astonished himself where he could find them in such numbers,
and how they came to him so easily. But they came to him easily just
because of Marynia. It was to be seen that she gave herself to him
with a panting of the heart, but also with confidence; that she gave
him her heart, her soul, and her whole being, her whole life, and that
not only for good, but for every moment of her life--and to the end
of it. In this regard no shadow rose in Pan Stanislav's mind, and
that certainty made him better at that moment, more sensitive and
eloquent, than he was ordinarily. At last they held each the other's
hand and looked into each other's eyes, not only with love, but with
the greatest friendship and confidence. Both felt the double reality.
Yet a few moments, and that future will begin. But now the thoughts
of both began to grow clear; and that internal disquiet, from which
they had not been free, yielded more and more and turned into a solemn
concentration of thought, as the religious ceremony drew near. Pan
Stanislav's thoughts did not fly apart like sparrows; there remained
to him only a certain astonishment, as it were, that he with all his
scepticism had such a feeling even of the religious significance of the
act which was about to be accomplished. At heart he was not a sceptic.
In his soul there was hidden even a certain yearning for religious
sensations; and if he had not returned to them it was only through a
loss of habit and through spiritual negligence. Scepticism, at most,
had shaken the surface of his thoughts, just as wind roughens the
surface of water; the depths of which are still calm. He had lost, too,
familiarity with forms; but to regain it was a work for the future and
Marynia. Meanwhile this ceremony to which he must yield seemed to him
so important, so full of solemnity and sacredness, that he was ready to
proceed to it with bowed head.

But first he had another ceremony, which, equally solemn in itself,
was disagreeable enough to Pan Stanislav; namely, to kneel before Pan
Plavitski, whom he considered a fool, receive his blessing and hear
an exhortation, which, as was known, Plavitski would not omit. Pan
Stanislav had said in his mind, however, "Since I am to marry, I must
pass through all which precedes it, and with a good face; little do I
care what expression that monkey, Bukatski, will have at such moments."
Therefore he knelt with all readiness at Marynia's side before her
father, and listened to his blessing with an exhortation, which, by the
way, was not long. Plavitski himself was moved really; his voice and
his hands trembled; he was barely able to pronounce something in the
nature of an adjuration to Pan Stanislav, not to prevent Marynia from
coming even occasionally to pray at his grave before it was grown over
completely with grass.

Finally, the solemnity of the moment affected Yozio Bigiel. Seeing Pan
Plavitski's tears, seeing Marynia and Pan Stanislav on their knees
(kneeling at Bigiel's house was not only a punishment, but frequently
the beginning of more vigorous instruction), Yozio gave expression
to his sympathy and fear by closing his eyes, opening his mouth, and
breaking into as piercing a wail as he could utter. When the rest of
the little Bigiels followed his example in great part, and all began
to move, for the time to pass to the church had arrived, the grave of
Pan Plavitski grown over with grass could not call forth an impression
sufficiently elegiac.

Sitting in the carriage between Abdulski and Bukatski, Pan Stanislav
hardly answered their questions in half words; he took no part in
the conversation, but kept up a monologue with himself. He thought
that in a couple of minutes that would come to pass of which he had
been dreaming whole months; and which till the death of Litka he had
desired with the greatest earnestness of his life. Here for the last
time he was roused by a feeling of the difference between that past
which not long since had vanished, and the present moment; but there
was a difference. Formerly he strove and desired; to-day he only wished
and consented. That thought pierced him like a shudder, for it shot
through his head that perhaps there was lacking in his own personality
that basis on which one may build. But he was a man able to keep
his alarms in close bonds, and to scatter them to the four winds at
a given moment. He said to himself, therefore: "First, there is no
time to think of this; and second, reality does not answer always to
imaginings; this is a simple thing." Then what Bukatski had said pushed
again into his memory: "It is not enough to take, a man must give;" but
he thought this a fabric of such fine threads that it had no existence
whatever, and that life should be taken more simply, that there is
no obligation to come to terms with preconceived theories. Here he
repeated what he had said to himself frequently, "I marry, and that is
the end." Then reality embraced him, or rather the present moment; he
had nothing in his head but Marynia, the church, and the ceremony.

She on the way meanwhile implored God in silence to help her to make
her husband happy; for herself she begged also a little happiness,
being certain, moreover, that her dead mother would obtain that for her.

Then they went arm in arm between the lines of invited and curious
people, seeing somewhat as through a mist lights gleaming in the
distance on the altar, and at the sides faces known and unknown.
Both saw more distinctly the face of Pani Emilia, who wore the white
veil of a Sister of Charity, her eyes at once smiling and filled with
tears. Litka came to the minds of both; and it occurred to them that it
was precisely she who was conducting them to the altar. After a while
they knelt down; before them was the priest, higher up the gleaming of
the candles, the glitter of gold, and the holy face of the principal
image. The ceremony commenced. They repeated after the priest the usual
phrases of the marriage vow; and Pan Stanislav, holding Marynia's hand,
was seized suddenly by emotion such as he had not expected, and such as
he had not felt since his mother had brought him to first communion. He
felt that that was not a mere every-day legal act, in virtue of which
a man receives the right to a woman; but in that binding of hands,
in that vow, there is present a certain mysterious power from beyond
this world,--that it is simply God before whom the soul inclines and
the heart trembles. The ears of both were struck then in the midst of
silence by the solemn words, "_Quod Deus junxit, homo non disjungat_;"
but Pan Stanislav felt that that Marynia whom he had taken becomes his
body and blood, and a part of his soul, and that for her too he must
be the same. That moment a chorus of voices in the choir burst out
with "_Veni Creator_," and a few moments after the Polanyetskis went
forth from the church. On the way out, the arms of Pani Emilia embraced
Marynia once again: "May God bless you!" and when they drove to the
wedding reception, she went to the cemetery to tell Litka the news,
that Pan Stas was married that day to Marynia.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Two weeks later, in Venice, the doorkeeper of the Hotel Bauer gave Pan
Stanislav a letter with the postmark of Warsaw. It was at the moment
when he and his wife were entering a gondola to go to the church of
Santa Maria della Salute, where on that day, the anniversary of her
death, a Mass was to be offered for the soul of Marynia's mother. Pan
Stanislav, who expected nothing important from Warsaw, put the letter
in his pocket, and asked his wife,--

"But is it not a little too early for Mass?"

"It is; a whole half hour."

"Then perhaps it would please thee to go first to the Rialto?"

Marynia was always ready to go. Never having been abroad before, she
simply lived in continual rapture, and it seemed to her that all which
surrounded her was a dream. More than once, in the excess of her
delight, she threw herself on her husband's neck, as if he had built
Venice, as if she ought to thank him alone for its beauty. More than
once she repeated,--

"I look and I see, but cannot believe that this is real."

So they went to the Rialto. There was little movement yet, because of
the early hour; the water was as if sleeping, the day calm, clear, but
not very bright,--one of those days in which the Grand Canal with all
its beauty has the repose of a cemetery; the palaces seem deserted
and forgotten, and in their motionless reflection in the water is
that peculiar deep sadness of dead things. One looks at them then in
silence, and as if in fear, lest by words the general repose may be
broken.

Thus did Marynia look. But Pan Stanislav, less sensitive, remembered
that he had a letter in his pocket, hence he drew it forth, and began
to read. After a time he exclaimed,--

"Ah! Mashko is married; their wedding was three days after ours."

But Marynia, as if roused from a dream, inquired, while blinking, "What
dost thou say?"

"I say, dreaming head, that Mashko's wedding is over."

She rested her head on his shoulder, and, looking into his eyes,
inquired,--

"What is Mashko to me? I have my Stas."

Pan Stanislav smiled like a man who kindly permits himself to be loved,
but does not wonder that he is loved; then he kissed his wife on the
forehead, with a certain distraction, for the letter had begun to
occupy him, and read on. All at once he sprang up, as if something had
pricked him, and cried,--

"Oh, that is a real catastrophe!"

"What has happened?"

"Panna Kraslavski has a life annuity of nine thousand rubles, which her
uncle left her; beyond that, not a copper."

"But that is a good deal."

"A good deal? Hear what Mashko writes:--

     "'In view of this, my bankruptcy is an accomplished fact, and the
     declaration of my insolvency a question of time.'

"They deceived each other; dost understand? He counted on her property,
and she on his."

"At least they have something to live on."

"They have something to live on; but Mashko has nothing with which
to pay his debts, and that concerns us a little,--me, thee, and thy
father. All may be lost."

Here Marynia was alarmed in earnest. "My Stas," said she, "perhaps thy
presence is needed there; let us return, then. What a blow this will be
to papa!"

"I will write Bigiel immediately to take my place, and save what is
possible. Do not take this business to heart too much, my child. I have
enough to buy a bit of bread for us both, and for thy father."

Marynia put her arms around his neck. "Thou, my good--With such a man
one may be at rest."

"Besides, something will be saved. If Mashko finds credit, he will
pay us; he may find a purchaser, too, for Kremen. He writes me to ask
Bukatski to buy Kremen, and to persuade him to do so. Bukatski is going
to Rome this evening, and I have invited him to lunch. I will ask him.
He has a considerable fortune, and would have something to do. I am
curious to know how Mashko's life will develop. He writes at the end of
the letter:

     "'I discovered the condition of affairs to my wife; she bore
     herself passively, but her mother is wild with indignation.' #/

"Finally he adds that at last he has fallen in love with his wife, and
that if they should separate, it would be the greatest unhappiness in
life for him. That lyric tale gives me little concern; but I am curious
as to how all this will end."

"She will not desert him," said Marynia.

"I do not know; I thought myself once that she would not, but I like to
contradict. Wilt thou bet?"

"No; for I do not wish to win. Thou ugly man, thou hast no knowledge of
women."

"On the contrary, I know them; and I know them because all are not like
this little one who is sailing now in a gondola."

"In a gondola in Venice, with her Stas," answered Marynia.

They were now at the church. When they went from Mass to the hotel,
they found Bukatski, dressed for the road, in a cross-barred gray
suit,--which, on his frail body, seemed too large,--in yellow shoes and
a fantastic cravat, tied as fancifully as carelessly.

"I am going to-day," said he, after he had greeted Marynia. "Do you
command me to prepare a dwelling in Florence for you? I can engage some
palace."

"Then you will halt on the road to Rome?"

"Yes. First, to give notice in the gallery of your coming, and to put
a sofa on the stairs for you; second, I halt for black coffee, which
is bad throughout Italy in general, but in Florence, at Giacosa's, Via
Tornabuoni, it is exceptionally excellent. That, however, is the one
thing of value in Florence."

"What pleasure is there for you in always saying something different
from what you think?"

"But I am thinking seriously of engaging nice lodgings on Lung-Arno for
you."

"We shall stop at Verona."

"For Romeo and Juliet? Of course; of course! Go now; later you would
shrug your shoulders if you thought of them. In a month it would be too
late for you to go, perhaps."

Marynia started up at him like a cat; then, turning to her husband,
said,--

"Stas, don't let this gentleman annoy me so!"

"Well," answered Pan Stanislav, "I will cut his head off, but after
lunch."

Bukatski began to declaim:--

                        "It is not yet near day:
        It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
      That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear."

Then, turning to Marynia, he inquired, "Has Pan Stanislav written a
sonnet for you?"

"No."

"Oh, that is a bad sign. You have a balcony on the street; has it never
come once to his head to stand under your balcony with a guitar?"

"No."

"Oh, very bad!"

"But there is no place to stand here, for there is water."

"He might go in a gondola. With us it is different, you see; but here
in Italy the air is such that if a man is in love really, he either
writes sonnets, or stands under a balcony with a guitar. It is a thing
perfectly certain, resulting from the geographical position, the
currents of the sea, the chemical make-up of the air and the water:
if a man does not write sonnets, or stand out of doors with a guitar,
surely he is not in love. I can bring you very famous books on this
subject."

"It seems that I shall be driven to cut his head off before lunch,"
said Pan Stanislav.

The execution, however, did not come, for the reason that it was just
time for lunch. They sat down at a separate table, but in the same hall
was a general one, which for Marynia, whom everything interested, was a
source of pleasure, too, for she saw _real_ English people. This made
on her such an impression as if she had gone to some land of exotics;
for since Kremen is Kremen, not one of its inhabitants had undertaken a
similar journey. For Bukatski, and even Pan Stanislav, her delight was
a source of endless jokes, but also of genuine pleasure. The first said
that she reminded him of his youth; the second called his wife a "field
daisy," and said that one was not sorry to show the world to a woman
like her. Bukatski noticed, however, that the "field daisy" had much
feeling for art and much honesty. Many things were known to her from
books or pictures; not knowing others, she acknowledged this openly,
but in her expressions there was nothing artificial or affected. When a
thing touched her heart, her delight had no bounds, so that her eyes
became moist. At one time Bukatski jested with her unmercifully; at
another he persuaded her that all the connoisseurs, so called, have a
nail in the head, and that she, as a sensitive and refined nature, and
so far unspoiled, was for him of the greatest importance in questions
of art; she would be still more important if she were ten years of age.

At lunch they did not talk of art, because Pan Stanislav remembered his
news from Warsaw, and said,--

"I had a letter from Mashko."

"And I, too," answered Bukatski.

"And thou? They must be hurried there; Mashko must be pressed in real
earnest. Is the question known to thee?"

"He persuades me, or rather, he implores me, to buy--dost thou know
what?"

Bukatski avoided Kremen, knowing well what trouble it had caused, and
was silent through delicacy toward Marynia.

But Pan Stanislav, understanding his intention, said,--

"Oh, my God! Once we avoided that name as a sore spot, but now, before
my wife, it is something different. It is hard to be tied up a whole
lifetime."

Bukatski looked at him quickly; Marynia blushed a little, and said,--

"Stas is perfectly right. Besides, I know that it is a question of
Kremen."

"Yes, it is of Kremen."

"Well, and what?" asked Pan Stanislav.

"I should not buy it even because of this,--that the lady might have
the impression that people are tossing it about like a ball."

"If I do not think at all of Kremen?" said Marynia, blushing still
more. She looked at her husband; and he nodded in sign of praise and
satisfaction.

"That is a proof," answered he, "that thou art a child of good
judgment."

"At the same time," continued Marynia, "if Pan Mashko does not hold
out, Kremen will either be divided, or go into usurers' hands, and that
to me would be disagreeable."

"Ah, ha!" said Bukatski, "but if you do not think at all of Kremen?"

Marynia looked again at her husband, and this time with alarm; he began
to laugh, however.

"Marynia is caught," said he.

Then he turned to Bukatski. "Evidently Mashko looks on thee as the one
plank of salvation."

"But I am not a plank; look at me! I am a straw, rather. The man who
wishes to save himself by such a straw will drown. Mashko has said
himself more than once to me, 'Thou hast blunted nerves.' Perhaps I
have; but I need strong impressions for that very reason. If I were
to help Mashko, he would work himself free, stand on his feet, give
himself out as a lord still further; his wife would personate a great
lady, they would be terribly _comme il faut_, and I should have the
stupid comedy, which I have seen already, and which I have yawned at.
If, on the other hand, I do not help him, he will be ruined, he will
perish, something interesting will happen, unexpected events will come
to pass, something tragic may result, which will occupy me more. Now,
think, both of you, I must pay for a wretched comedy, and dearly; the
tragedy I can have for nothing. How is a man to hesitate in this case?"

"Fi! how can you say such things?" exclaimed Marynia.

"Not only can I say them, but I shall write them to Mashko; besides, he
has deceived me in the most unworthy manner."

"In what?"

"In what? In this, that I thought: 'Oh, that is a regular snob! that
is material for a dark personage; that is a man really without heart
or scruples!' Meanwhile, what comes out? That at bottom of his soul he
has a certain honesty; that he wants to pay his creditors; that he is
sorry for that puppet with red eyes; that he loves her; that for him
separation from her would be a terrible catastrophe. He writes this to
me himself most shamelessly. I give my word that in our society one can
count on nothing. I will settle abroad, for I cannot endure this."

Now Marynia was angry in earnest.

"If you say such things, I shall beg to break relations with you."

But Pan Stanislav shrugged his shoulders, and added: "In fact, thy talk
is ever on some conceit to amuse thyself and others, and never wilt
thou think with judgment and in human fashion. Dost understand, I do
not persuade thee to buy Kremen, and all the more because I might have
a certain interest to do so; but there would be some occupation for
thee there, something to do."

Here Bukatski began to laugh, and said after a while,--

"I told thee once that I like, above all, to do what pleases me, and
that it pleases me most to do nothing; hence it is that doing nothing
I do what pleases me most. If thou art wise, prove that I have uttered
nonsense. Take the second case: Suppose me a buckwheat sower; that,
however, simply passes imagination. I, for whom rain or fine weather is
merely the question of choosing a cane or an umbrella, would have, in
my old age, to stand on one leg, like a stork, and look to see whether
it pleases the sun to shine, or the clouds to drop rain. I should have
to tremble as to whether my wheat is likely to grow, or my rape-seed
shed, or rot fall on the potatoes; whether I shall be able to stake my
peas, or furnish his Worship of Dogweevil as many bushels as I have
promised; whether my plough-horses have the glanders, and my sheep the
foot-rot. I should, in my old age, come to this,--that from blunting of
faculties I would interject after every three words: 'Pan Benefactor,'
or 'What is it that I wanted to say?' _Voyons! pas si bête!_ I, a free
man, should become a _glebæ adscriptus_, a 'Neighbor,' a 'Brother
Lata,' a 'Pan Matsyei,' a 'Lechit.'"[5]

Here, roused a little by the wine, he began to quote in an undertone
the words of Slaz in "Lilla Weneda":--

      "Am I a Lechit? What does this mean? Are boorishness,
      Drunkenness, gluttony, gazing from my eyes
      With the seven deadly sins, a passion for uproar,
      Pickled cucumbers, and escutcheons?"

"Argue with him," said Pan Stanislav, "especially when at the root of
the matter he is partly right."

But Marynia, who as soon as Bukatski had begun to speak of work in the
country, grew somewhat thoughtful, shook thoughtfulness now from her
forehead, and said,--

"When papa was not well,--and never in Kremen has he been so well as
recently,--I saved him a little in management, and later that work
became for me a habit. Though God knows there was no lack of troubles,
it gave me a pleasure that I cannot describe. But I did not understand
the cause of this till Pan Yamish explained it. 'That,' said he, 'is
the real work on which the world stands, and every other is either the
continuation of it, or something artificial.' Later I understood even
things which he did not explain. More than once, when I went out to
the fields in spring, and saw that all things were growing, I felt that
my heart, too, was growing with them. And now I know why that is: In
all other relations that a man holds there may be deceit, but the land
is truth. It is impossible to deceive the land; it either gives, or
gives not, but it does not deceive. Therefore land is loved, as truth;
and because one loves it, it teaches one to love. And the dew falls not
only on grain, and on meadows, but on the soul, as it were; and a man
becomes better, for he has to deal with truth, and he loves,--that is,
he is nearer God. Therefore I loved my Kremen so much."

Here Marynia became frightened at her own speech, and at this, what
would "Stas" think; at the same time reminiscences had roused her. All
this was reflected in her eyes as the dawn, and on her young face; and
she was herself like the dawn.

Bukatski looked at her as he would at some unknown newly discovered
master-piece of the Venetian school; then he closed his eyes, and
hid half of his small face in his enormous fantastic cravat, and
whispered,--

"_Délicieuse!_"

Then, thrusting forth his chin from his cravat, he said,--

"You are perfectly right."

But the logical woman would not let herself be set aside by a
compliment.

"If I am right, you are not."

"That is another matter. You are right because it becomes you; a woman
in that case is always right."

"Stas!" said Marynia, turning to her husband. But there was so much
charm in the woman at that moment, that he also looked on her with
delight, his eyes smiled, his nostrils moved with a quick motion; for a
moment he covered her hand with his, and said,--

"Oh, child, child!"

Then he inclined to her, and whispered,--

"If we were not in this hall, I would kiss those dear eyes and that
mouth."

And, speaking thus, Pan Stanislav made a great mistake, for at that
moment it was not enough to feel the physical charm of Marynia, to be
roused at the color of her face, her eyes, or her mouth, but it was
necessary to feel the soul in her; to what an extent he did not feel it
was shown by his fondling words, "O child, child!" She was for him at
that moment only a charming child-woman, and he thought of nothing else.

Just then coffee was brought. To end the conversation, Pan Stanislav
said,--

"So Mashko has come out a lover, and that after marriage."

Bukatski swallowed a cup of boiling coffee, and answered, "In this is
the stupidity, that Mashko is the man, not in this,--that the love
was after marriage. I have not said anything sensible. If I have, I
beg pardon most earnestly, and promise not to do so a second time. I
have burned my tongue evidently with the hot coffee! I drink it so hot
because they tell me that it is good for headache; and my head aches,
aches."

Here Bukatski placed his palm on his neck and the back of his head, and
blinked, remaining motionless for a few seconds.

"I am talking and talking," said he, then, "but my head aches. I should
have gone to my lodgings, but Svirski, the artist, is to come to me
here. We are going to Florence together; he is a famous painter in
water-colors, really famous. No one has brought greater force out of
water-colors. But see, he is just coming!"

In fact, Svirski, as if summoned by a spell, appeared in the hall, and
began to look around for Bukatski. Espying him at last, he approached
the table.

He was a robust, short man, with hair as black as if he were an
Italian. He had an ordinary face, but a wise, deep glance, and also
mild. While walking, he swayed a little because of his wide hips.

Bukatski presented him to Marynia in the following words,--

"I present to you Pan Svirski, a painter, of the genus genius, who
not only received his talent, but had the most happy idea of not
burying it, which he might have done as well, and with equal benefit
to mankind, as any other man. But he preferred to fill the world with
water-colors and with fame."

Svirski smiled, showing two rows of teeth, wonderfully small, but white
as ivory, and said,--

"I wish that were true."

"And I will tell you why he did not bury his talent," continued
Bukatski; "his reasons were so parochial that it would be a shame for
any decent artist to avow them. He loves Pognembin, which is somewhere
in Poznan, or thereabouts, and he loves it because he was born there.
If he had been born in Guadeloupe he would have loved Guadeloupe, and
love for Guadeloupe would have saved him in life also. This man makes
me indignant; and will the lady tell me if I am not right?"

To this Marynia answered, raising her blue eyes to Svirski, "Pan
Bukatski is not so bad as he seems, for he has said everything that is
good of you."

"I shall die with my qualities known," whispered Bukatski.

Svirski was looking meanwhile at Marynia, as only an artist can permit
himself to look at a woman, and not offend. Interest was evident in his
eyes, and at last he muttered,--

"To see such a head all at once, here in Venice, is a genuine surprise."

"What?" asked Bukatski.

"I say, that the lady is of a wonderfully well-defined type. Oh, this,
for example" (here he drew a line with his thumb along his nose, mouth,
and chin). "And also what purity of outline!"

"Well, isn't it true?" asked Pan Stanislav, with excitement. "I have
always thought the same."

"I will lay a wager that thou hast never thought of it," retorted
Bukatski.

But Pan Stanislav was glad and proud of that interest which Marynia
roused in the famous artist; hence he said,--

"If it would give you any pleasure to paint her portrait, it would give
me much more to have it."

"From the soul of my heart," answered Svirski, with simplicity; "but
I am going to Rome to-day. There I have begun the portrait of Pani
Osnovski."

"And we shall be in Rome no later than ten days from now."

"Then we are agreed."

Marynia returned thanks, blushing to her ears. But Bukatski began to
take farewell, and drew Svirski after him. When they had gone out, he
said,--

"We have time yet. Come to Floriani's for a glass of cognac."

Bukatski did not know how to drink, and didn't like spirits; but since
he had begun to take morphine, he drank more than he could endure,
because some one had told him that one neutralized the other.

"What a delightful couple those Polanyetskis are!" said Svirski.

"They are not long married."

"It is evident that he loves her immensely. When I praised her, his
eyes were smiling, and he rose as if on yeast."

"She loves him a hundred times more."

"What knowledge hast thou in such matters?"

Bukatski did not answer; he only raised his pointed nose, and said, as
if to himself,--

"Oh, marriage and love have disgusted me; for it is always profit on
one side, and sacrifice on the other. Polanyetski is a good man, but
what of that? She has just as much sense, just as much character,
but she loves more; therefore life will fix itself for them in this
way,--he will be the sun, he will be gracious enough to shine, to warm,
will consider her as his property, as a planet made to circle around
him. All this is indicated to-day. She has entered his sphere. There
is in him a certain self-confidence which angers me. He will have her
with an income, but she will have him alone without an income. He will
permit himself to love, considering his love as virtue, kindness, and
favor; she will love, considering her love as a happiness and a duty.
Look, if you please, at him, the divine, the resplendent! I want to go
back and tell them this, in the hope that they will be less happy."

Meanwhile the two men had taken seats in front of Floriani's, and
soon cognac was brought to them. Svirski thought some time over the
Polanyetskis, and then inquired,--

"But if the position is pleasant for her?"

"I know that she has short sight; she might be pleased quite as well to
wear glasses."

"Go to the deuce! glasses on a face like hers--"

"This makes thee indignant; but the other makes me--"

"Yes, for thou hast a kind of coffee-mill in thy head, which grinds,
and grinds everything till it grinds it into fine dust. What dost thou
want of love in general?"

"I, of love? I want nothing of love! Let the devil take him who wants
anything of love! I have sharp pains in my shoulder-blades from it. But
if I were other than I am, if I had to describe what love ought to be,
if I wanted anything of it, then I should wish--"

"What? hop! jump over!"

"That it were composed in equal parts of desire and reverence."

Then he drank a glass of cognac, and added after a while,--

"It seems to me that I have said something which may be wise, if it is
not foolish. But it is all one to me."

"No! it is not foolish."

"As God lives, it is all one to me."

FOOTNOTES:

  [5] Polish noble.

CHAPTER XXXII.

After a stay of one week in Florence, Pan Stanislav received his
first letter from Bigiel concerning the business of the house, and
news so favorable that it almost surpassed his expectations. The law
prohibiting export of grain because of the famine was proclaimed.
But the firm had enormous supplies bought and exported previously;
and because prices, especially at the first moment, had risen
excessively abroad, Bigiel and Polanyetski began to do perfect
business. Speculation, planned and carried through on a great scale,
turned out so profitable that from well-to-do people, which they were
before, they had become almost rich. For that matter Pan Stanislav
had been sure of his business from the beginning, and entertained no
fears; the news, however, pleased him both with reference to profit
and his own self-love. Success intoxicates a man and strengthens his
self-confidence. So, in talking with Marynia, he was not able to
refrain from giving her to understand that he had an uncommon head,
unquestionably higher than all those around him, like a tree the
loftiest in the forest; that he is a man who always reaches the place
at which he has aimed,--in a word, a kind of phoenix in that society,
abounding in men who know not how to help themselves. In the whole
world he could not have found a listener more willing and ready to
accept everything with the deepest faith.

"Thou art a woman," said he, not without a shade of loftiness;
"therefore why tell thee the affair from the beginning, and enter into
details. To thee, as a woman, I can explain all best if I say thus:
I was not in a condition yesterday to buy the medallion with a black
pearl which I showed thee at Godoni's; to-day I am, and will buy it."

Marynia thanked him, and begged that he would not do so; but he
insisted, and said that nothing would restrain him, that that was
resolved on, and Marynia must consider herself the owner of the great
black pearl, which, on such a white neck as hers, would be beautiful.
Then he fell to kissing that neck; and when finally he had satisfied
himself, but still felt the need of a listener of some sort, he began
to walk in the room, smiling at his wife and at his own thoughts,
saying,--

"I do not mention those who do nothing: Bukatski, for instance, who is
known to be good for nothing, nor asses like Kopovski, who is known to
have a cat's head; but take even men who do something,--men of mind
seemingly. Never would Bigiel seize a chance on the wing: he would set