Генрик Сенкевич
Whirlpools
III
Laskowicz's extreme fanaticism could not in reality harmonize with the extreme cynical scepticism of Swidwicki, who in addition took advantage of the situation not only beyond measure, but to the point of cruelty. He himself spoke of it and boasted about it to Gronski, when he met him in the restaurant, to which Gronski went after Krzycki's removal.
"I have enough of my revolutionary maggot," he said, "I have enough of him, especially since I have satisfied myself that personally he is honest and will not pilfer any money from my pocket-book. From that time he has bored me. As for harboring such a simpleton one might go to Siberia. I regarded it in the beginning as a species of sport. I thought I would have a permanent sensation of a certain anxiety and, in the meantime, I have not experienced anything of the kind. The only satisfaction which I have is to point out to him his own stupidity and that of his party. By that I drive him to rabidness."
"But that he cares to argue with you-"
"He does not want to but is unable to restrain himself. His temperament and fanaticism carry him away."
"At one time I met a similar individual," answered Gronski, "and not very long ago-out in the country, in Jastrzeb. He was a student, a tutor of Stas, whom Krzycki later discharged because he incited the field hands and was an agitator among peasants of the neighborhood."
"Ah," ejaculated, with a strange smile, Swidwicki, to whom it occurred that Pauly also was at Jastrzeb.
"What? Why do you smile?" asked Gronski.
"Oh, nothing. Speak further."
"I rode with him once to the city and on the way had quite a chat with him."
"According to your habit."
"According to my habit. Now among empty phrases, which only dull minds would accept as genuine coin, he said some interesting things. I learned a little about the angle from which they view the world."
"My maggot at times says interesting things. Yesterday I led him into the admission that socialists of the pure water regard as their greatest enemies the peasants and the radical members of the bourgeoisie. I began to pour oil on the fire and he unbosomed himself. An unsophisticated peasant aspires to ownership, and that aspiration the devil cannot eradicate, and as to the bourgeoisie he spoke thus: 'What harm,' he said, 'do these few nobles and priests who infest the world do to us? Our enemy is the bourgeois, rich or poor. Our enemy is the radical, who thinks that as soon as he shouts that he does not believe in God and priests that he buys us. Our enemy is that boaster, who speaks in the name of the common people and is ready to tickle us under the armpits, so that we should smile on him. He is the one who fawns on us, like a dog at a roll of butter, and preserves all the instincts of a bourgeois.' And he chattered further until I said: 'Hold on! Why, you are with the radicals "fratres Helenae!"' And he to this: 'That is not true! The radical, wealthy bourgeois, who from fear dyes in red and borrows the standard and methods from us, introduces confusion in minds and drabbles in the mud our idea; and the poor one, if he annually saves even the smallest amount, injures us for he offers to work at a lower price than the pure proletaire, who always is as poor as Job. We,' he said, 'will put the knife, above all things, to the throats of the bourgeois for latent treachery lurks in him.' Thus he chattered and I was willing to concede justice to him, if in general I believed in justice, but I did not concede it yet for another reason, and that is, he is too stupid to have reasoned out such things. It was evident that he repeated what others taught him. In fact I did not neglect to tell him so."
Further discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Dolhanski who, observing Gronski, approached him, although he disliked to meet Swidwicki.
"How are you?" he said, "My ladies took a trip to Czestochowo; so I am free. Will you permit me to be seated with you?"
"Certainly, certainly. Why, these are your last days."
"It would be worth while even for that reason to drink a little bottle," observed Swidwicki, "particularly as it is, besides, my birthday."
"If the calendar was a wine-cellar and the dates in it bottles, then your birthday would occur every day," answered Gronski.
"I swear to you upon everything at which I jeer, that, contrary to my habit and inclination, this time I speak the truth."
Saying this, he nodded to the waiter and ordered him to bring two bottles, calculating that afterwards more would be forthcoming. In the meantime Dolhanski said:
"I met Krzycki to-day. He looks poorly; somehow not himself, and he told me that he does not live with you but in a hotel. Did you by chance quarrel?"
"No. But he moved away from me and Pani Krzycki from Pani Otocka's."
"There is some kind of epidemic," exclaimed Swidwicki, "for my cutthroat is leaving me."
"Perhaps something has passed between Krzycki and Miss Anney," said Dolhanski. "I supposed that they were getting quite intimate. Did they part-or what?"
"A marchpane, that Englishwoman," interrupted Swidwicki; "but her maid has more electricity in her."
Gronski hesitated for a while; after which he said:
"No, they have not parted, but something has occurred. I do not know why I should make a secret of that which, sooner or later, you will find out. It has developed that Miss Anney is not the born, but adopted, child of the rich English manufacturer, lately deceased, Mr. Anney, and of his late wife."
"Well, if the adoption gives her all the rights, and particularly the right of inheritance, is it not all the same to Krzycki?"
"The adoption gives her all rights; nevertheless it is not entirely the same to Krzycki, for it appears that Miss Anney is the daughter of a blacksmith of Rzeslewo and is named Hanka Skibianka."
"Ha!" cried Swidwicki, "Perdita has been found but not the king's daughter. What does the pretty Florizel say to this?"
But Dolhanski began to stare at Gronski as if he saw him for the first time in his life.
"What are you saying?"
"The actual fact."
"Sapristi! But that is a nursery tale. Sapristi! You are joking."
"I give you my word it is so. She herself told that to Krzycki."
"I like that expression of astonishment on Dolhanski's face," exclaimed Swidwicki. "Man, come to yourself."
Dolhanski restrained himself, for he always proclaimed that a true gentleman never should be surprised.
"I remember now," he said, "that this is the Skibianka to whom Uncle Zarnowski bequeathed a few thousand roubles."
"The same."
"Therefore his daughter."
"Fancy to yourself otherwise. Skiba came from Galicia to Rzeslewo with a wife and a child a few years old."
"Therefore of pure peasant blood."
"A Piast's,10 a Piast's," cried Swidwicki.
"Absolutely pure," answered Gronski.
"And what does Laudie say?"
"He swallowed the tidings and is trying to digest them," again blurted out Swidwicki.
"That substantially is the case. He found himself in a new situation and locked himself up. It dumfounded him a little, and he desires to come to himself."
"He was enamoured to the point of ludicrousness but now he will probably break off."
"I do not admit that, but I repeat, that, in view of the changed situation, he has fallen into a certain internal strife, which he must first quell."
"I candidly confess that I would break off all relations unconditionally."
"But if Kaska or Hanka had a hundred thousand pounds?" asked Swidwicki.
"In such a case-I would have fallen into a strife," answered Dolhanski, phlegmatically.
After a while he continued:
"For it seems that it is nothing, but in life it may appear to be something. Omitting the various cousins, 'Mats' and 'Jacks,' who undoubtedly will be found; there also will be found dissimilar instincts, dissimilar dispositions, and dissimilar tastes. Why, the deuce! I would not want a wife who suddenly might be ruled by an unexpected passion for amber rosaries, for shelling peas, for swingling flax, for picking fruit, or for gathering mushrooms, not to say berries and nuts, and walking barefooted."
Here he turned to Gronski.
"Shrug your shoulders, but it is so."
"That would not shock me," said Swidwicki, "only, if I were to marry Miss Anney, I would just stipulate that she at times should go about barefooted. When I am in the country, nothing affects me so much as the sight of the bare feet of girls. It is true that they often have erysipelas about the ankles, which comes from the prickle of the stubblefields. But I assume that Miss Anney has not got erysipelas."
"One cannot talk with you in a dignified manner."
"Why?" replied Swidwicki. "Let Krzycki now clip coupons from his dignity but not we. Did you say that he belongs to the National Democrats?"
"No, not I. But what connection has that with Miss Anney?"
"Oh, – oh, a nobleman-a National Democrat-has found out that his flame has peasant blood in her veins and nevertheless his belly on that account has begun to ache; nevertheless, he is stung by that deminutio capitis."
"Who told you that? Besides, it should be permutatio, not deminutio."
"Yes! The English wares take on the appearance of a domestic product and fall in value. Justly, justly."
"Do you know who could with perfect independence enter into a marriage under such conditions?" asked Dolhanski. "A truly great gentlemen."
"But not Polish," exclaimed Swidwicki.
"There you are already beginning! Why not Polish?"
"Because a Polish gentleman has not sufficient faith in his own blood; he plainly has not sufficient pride to believe that he will elevate a woman to himself and not lower himself to her."
Gronski began to laugh:
"I did not expect that charge from your lips," he said.
"Why? I am an individualist, and in so far as I do not regard myself as a specimen of the basest race, so far do I regard myself as a specimen of the best. According to me one belongs to the aristocracy only through lucky chance; that is, when one brings into the world a suitable profile and corresponding brain. But Dolhanski, for instance, in so far as he has not purchased portraits of ancestors at an auction-and our other gentlemen-judge that blood constitutes that appurtenance. Now granting these premises, I contend that our tories do not know how to be proud of their blood."
"At home," said Gronski, "you vent your spleen upon the socialists, and here you wish to vent it upon the aristocracy."
"That does not diminish my merits. I have a few pretty remarks for the National Democracy."
"I know, I know. But how will you prove that which you said about the Polish tories?"
"How will I prove it? By the Socratic method-with the aid of questions. Did you ever observe when a Polish gentleman abroad becomes acquainted with a Frenchman or Englishman? I, while I had money, passed winters in Nice or in Cairo and saw a number of them. Now, every time I propounded to myself the question which now I put to you: why the devil it is not the Frenchman or Englishman who tries to please the Pole, but the Pole them? Why is it that only the Pole fawns, only the Pole coquets? Because he is almost ashamed of his descent; and if by chance a Frenchman tells him that from his accent he took him for a Frenchman, or an Englishman takes him for an Englishman, then he melts with joy, like butter in a frying-pan! Ah, I have seen such coquettes by the score-and it is an old story. Such coquetry, for instance, Stanislaus Augustus11 possessed. At home, the Polish gentleman at times knows how to hold his nose high. Before a foreigner he is on both paws. Is not that a lack of pride in his own race, in his own blood, in his own traditions? If you have the slightest grain of a sense of justice, even though no larger than the grain of caviar, you must admit the justice of my remarks. As to myself, I have been ashamed sometimes that I am a Pole."
"That means that you committed the same sin with which you charge others," replied Gronski. "If the tips of the wings of our eagle reached both seas, as at one time they did, perhaps Poles might be different. But at present-tell me-of what are they to be proud?"
"You are twisting things. I am speaking of racial pride only, not political," answered Swidwicki. "After all, may the devils take them. I prefer to drink."
"Say what you will," asserted Dolhanski, "but I will merely tell you this: if internal affairs were exclusively in their hands, some fooleries might take place, but we would not be fried in the sauce in which we are fried to-day."
Swidwicki turned to him with eyes glistening already a little abnormally.
"My dear sir," he said, "in order to govern a country it is necessary to have one of three things: either the greatest number, which the canaille has behind it-I beg pardon, I should have said the Democracy-or the greatest sound sense, which nobody amongst us possesses, or the most money, which the Jews have. And as I have demonstrated that our great gentlemen do not even have any sentiment of traditions, therefore what have they?"
"At least good manners, which you lack," retorted Dolhanski with aversion.
"No. I will tell you what they have-if not all of them, then the second or third one: but I will tell it to you in a whisper, so as not to shock Gronski's virgin ears."
And leaning over to Dolhanski, he whispered a word to him, after which he snorted, maliciously:
"I do not say that that is nothing, but it is not sufficient to govern the country with."
But Dolhanski frowned and said:
"If that is so, then you surely belong to the highest aristocracy."
"Of course! certainly! I have a diploma certified a few years ago in Aix-la-chapelle, the place of the coronation!"
Saying this, he again quaffed his wine and continued with a kind of feverish gayety:
"Ah, permit me to rail, permit me to scoff at men and things! I always do that internally but at times I must expectorate the gall. Permit me! For after all, I am a Pole, and for a Pole there perhaps cannot be a greater pleasure than defacing, belittling, pecking at, calumniating, spitting on, and pulling down statues from the pedestals. Republican tradition, is it not? In addition Providence so happily arranged it that a Pole loves that the most, and when he himself is concerned, he feels it most acutely. A delightful society!"
"You are mistaken," replied Gronski, "for in that respect we have changed prodigiously and in proof of it, I will cite one instance: When the painter Limiatycki received for his 'Golgotha' a grand medal in Paris, all the local little brushes at once fumed at him. So meeting him, I asked him whether he intended to retaliate, and he replied to me with the greatest serenity: 'I am serving my fatherland and art, but only stupidity cannot understand that, while only turpitude will not understand it.' And he was right, for whoever has any kind of wings at his shoulders and can raise himself a little in the air, need not pay attention to the mud of the streets."
"Tut, tut; mud is a purely native product, the same as other symptoms of your national culture, namely: filth, scandals, envy, folly, indolence, big words and little deeds, cheap politics, brawling, a relish for mass-meetings, banditism, revolvers, and bombs; if I wanted to mention everything I would not finish until late at night."
"Then I will throw in for you a few more things," said Gronski; "drunkenness, cynicism, a stupid pose of despair, thoughtless hypercriticism, scoffing at misfortune, fouling one's own nest, spitting at blood and suffering, undermining faith in the future, and blasphemy against the nation. Have you yet enough?"
"I have not enough of wine. Order some more, order some more!"
"I will not order any more wine, but I will tell yet more, that you err in claiming that these are native products. They are brought by a certain wind which evidently has fanned you."
But Swidwicki, who this time had no desire to quarrel but did have a desire to drink, evidently wishing to change the subject of the conversation, unexpectedly exclaimed:
"Apropos of winds, what a pity that such sensible people as the Prussians commit one gross blunder."
Gronski, who had already risen to bid him farewell, was overcome temporarily by curiosity.
"What blunder?" he asked.
"That they assume super-villeiny to be superhumanity."
"In this you are right."
"I feel a contempt for myself as often as I am right."
"Then we will leave you with your wine and your contempt."
Saying this, Gronski nodded to Dolhanski and they departed. Swidwicki's last words, however, caused him to reflect; so after a while he said:
"Now people's minds are haunted by the Prussians and they are reminded of them by the slightest cause. After all, Swidwicki's description of them was apposite."
"If you knew how little I am interested in Swidwicki's descriptions."
"Nevertheless, you vie with him and talk in a similar strain," answered Gronski.
After which, pursuing further the train of his thoughts, he said:
"Nietzsche also did not perceive that the susceptibility and appreciation of other people's woes becomes manifest only upon the culmination of the creative …"
"Good, good, but at this moment I am more interested in what Krzycki is going to do about Miss Anney."
Dolhanski, who could not endure Swidwicki, would have been sorely afflicted, if he had suspected that the same question occurred to the latter's mind.
Remaining alone, Swidwicki recalled Gronski's recital and began to laugh, as the thought of such unusual complications amused him immensely. He imagined to himself what excitement must have prevailed at Krzycki's and at Pani Otocka's, and how far the affair would agitate the circles of their relatives and acquaintances. And suddenly he began to soliloquize in the following manner:
"And if I paid Miss Anney a visit? It even behooves me to leave her a card. That would be eminently proper. I may not find her in-that does not matter much, but if I should find her in, I will try to see whether her legs are not too bulky at the ankles. For culture, education, even polish may be acquired, but delicate ligaments of the legs and hands it is necessary to inherit through a whole series of generations. That furious Pauly, nevertheless, has a sufficiently thin ligature. The devil, however, knows who her father was, I will go. If I do not find one, I shall find the other."
And he went. He was admitted not by the man-servant but by Pauly; so he smiled at her in his most ingratiating manner and said:
"Good-day, pretty fennel-flower! Is Panna Hanka Skibianka at home?"
"What Hanka Skibianka?" she asked in surprise.
"Then, the little lady does not know the great tidings?"
"What great tidings? I do not know any."
"That the mistress of the little lady is not named Miss Anney?"
"Do not upset our heads."
"I give the little lady my word of honor. Ask Pan Gronski, or Pan Krzycki, who is chewing off his fingers from mortification. I give you my word of honor. I also could tell you more, but if the little lady is not curious I will go. Here is my card for Panna Ski-bian-ka."
The eyes of the girl sparkled with curiosity. She took the card mechanically.
"I do not say that you should go, but I do not believe," she said hurriedly.
"And I know yet more."
"What is it?"
"I will whisper it in your ear."
It did not occur to Pauly that there was no necessity for Swidwicki speaking in a whisper. She leaned towards him with a palpitating heart and, though he flooded her with his breath, saturated with the odor of wine, she did not withdraw her head.
"What is it?" she repeated.
"That Panna Skibianka is a peasant woman from Zarnow!"
"That is untrue!"
"As I love God."
And, saying this, he suddenly smacked her ear with a broad kiss.
IV
Miss Anney's letter bore the impress of extraordinary simplicity. At the beginning she said that from the moment when he proposed for her hand she was compelled to reveal her former name; while in the continuation it contained an equally simple account of herself and her family from the time of their departure from Rzeslewo. This sad course of events she related in the following words:
"My father came from Galicia and had in America relatives of whom he heard that through labor they had amassed fortunes. Learning of this, he decided to settle there also and seek his fortune beyond the ocean. We left Rzeslewo at a time when you were in Warsaw. I knew how to write as I was taught that in the manor-house, and would have informed you about this if I had known your address. We went, not saying anything to anybody, to Hamburg, and at that place there occurred what often happens to peasant emigrants. The agent tricked us, defrauded us of our money, and placed us on a vessel bound not for America but for England. Thrown upon the pavements of London, we soon fell into dire want. For the passage to America there now was no means. My mother died of typhoid fever in a hospital and father, from despair and nostalgia, declined rapidly in health. Under these circumstances we were found by Mr. Anney, one of the best and noblest men in the world, a friend and patron of the Poles, who gave us employment. But the succor came too late, and my father died in the course of a year. I remained in the factory and worked in it until the accident which changed my status entirely. The Anney family had only one child, a daughter, whom they loved beyond everything in the world and surrounded with a solicitude all the greater because she was threatened by a pulmonary ailment. Once it happened that Miss Anney, while visiting the factory, was almost carried away by the driving-wheel of the machinery. I rushed to her assistance, imperilling a little my own life, and from that time the gratitude of the Anney family for me had no bounds. They took me from the factory to themselves, and in this manner I became the companion and afterwards the bosom friend of their daughter. A Pole, an emigrant of the year '63, a friend of Mr. Anney and a man well educated, taught us both, and me, separately, in Polish. I endeavored to benefit, as much as lay in my power, from these lessons, and after two years was able to approach a little the intellectual plane of my friend and my environment. But Agnes-for such was the Christian name of Miss Anney-began to fail in her health. Then Mr. Anney sold his factory and we all, including our instructor, removed to Italy. There about three years were passed in a search for the best climate for our dearest patient. All efforts proved unavailing, however, as God took His angel unto Himself. After Agnes' death, the Anneys, remembering that I loved with my whole soul our dead one, adopted me as their own child and gave me not only their family name, but desiring to overcome their despair, suffering, and sorrow, even the Christian name of the deceased. Nevertheless, the sorrow could not be overcome, and though I tried with my whole heart to be to them some sort of comfort in life, in the course of two years both followed their greatest love.
"And this is the end of my history. And after that came those events which brought me nearer to you; therefore I desire to justify my conduct in your eyes. I have a right to the name which I bear, and my life from the time of the departure from Rzeslewo has been pure. Conscience reproaches me with only one new error. This was that I did not confess to the Anneys that I already was unworthy of their care. But for such a confession I lacked strength. I loved too much my Agnes and feared that they would separate me from her. Later I did not want to add to their affliction. I did not have the strength. At times, also, I think that now when they look upon me from heaven and see everything, they forgive me for keeping that secret. Beyond this I once more repeat and swear that my life has been pure. But in my memory I have only coffins and coffins, and of my Rzeslewo days there remains to me only the recollection of you. I could not forget either my sin or my happiness. Often during the life of my adopted sister, while gazing into her chaste eyes, I struggled with remorse, and at the same time I wept from intense longing. After that, being left alone in the world, I had nothing to cherish in my heart, and I began to yearn yet more. When, after the death of the Anneys, I became acquainted and grew intimate with Zosia Otocka in Brussels, I accidentally learned from a conversation that she was your relative. Then I related to her my entire life, not concealing anything, and she not only did not spurn me, but loved me yet more. Emboldened by her goodness, I confessed to her my longing for the old days and Rzeslewo. Perhaps it may be a new fault on my part that I confided to Zosia my insurmountable desire of seeing yet once more in my life, Jastrzeb, Rzeslewo, and-why should I not state the whole truth? – and you. Then Zosia said to me: 'I understand you; ride with me to Jastrzeb as Miss Anney, as you cannot do otherwise. Nobody will recognize you and you will take a reckoning with your own heart. Perhaps reality may extinguish the rainbow of recollections. If they are assuaged forever, so much the better for you; if he should fall in love with you, so much the worse for him; if your former echoes reawaken, then we will assume that this was predestination.' Such was Zosia's advice, and for that reason, when your mother invited her and Marynia, I also accompanied them to Jastrzeb. But I do not wish to pass for any better than I am. I confess that on the road I always had in mind Zosia's words: 'If he falls in love with you, so much the worse for him,' and I wished that to happen. I was certain that you had entirely forgotten me, and I thought that if now you fell in love with me without any requital, that it would be a sort of condign punishment for your forgetfulness and a kind of triumph for myself and-if not such a womanly revenge as books tell of, – at least a great solace to my self-love. But it happened otherwise, for I forgot to take into account that I had a heart, not of foreign books, but of a Polish village-simple and faithful. When I saw Rzeslewo, Jastrzeb, and you, I wanted only to weep and weep, as I wept at Pan Zarnowski's funeral, and I discovered within me that Hanka, who years before loved you with her first childish love and afterwards with such affection, did not love any one else. You know, sir, what happened further. If you do not return, I will not bear any resentment towards you, but do not harbor any ill-will against me. I, too, merely skirted along the rim of happiness."
The signature was "Hanka." Ladislaus' chin quivered from time to time while he was reading the letter and his eyes grew dim. He began to repeat the signature "Hanka, Hanka." He rose abruptly and paced over the room with big steps. His thoughts rolled into a ball in his head like clouds in the heavens; they collected and scattered in all directions like a startled stud of horses on the wild steppes of the Ukraine. He read the letter a second and third time, and under its influence there began to glide before his eyes pictures of the past as distinct as if all that which occurred some time ago had happened but yesterday. He recalled those bright moonlight nights when he stole away to the mill, and that village girl, fragrant with the hay, who, to the question of whether she loved him, whispered in reply, "Of course," and threw her yet half-childish arms around his neck and hugged him to her breast with such strength that no other love could make a sincerer avowal. He recollected that he nevertheless loved her at that time, and when he missed her, longed for her, and even inquired of the people about the blacksmith's family-but with reserve and faint-heartedly, as fear closed his lips.
Subsequently that girl was erased from his memory so completely that even the light pangs of conscience which he felt on her account vanished; nothing remained. It was well with him in the world and he sought new sensations, while she was seized by the whirlwind of life and was hurled like a wretched leaf upon a foreign land, where she suffered from sheer starvation. Nevertheless, neither at that time, nor later, when good people took care of her, did she forget him nor did she cease to long for him. Ladislaus was not a deep connoisseur of the human soul; he felt, nevertheless, that what for him was simply a love adventure, a shallow enjoyment of the senses, a transient impression which disperses to the winds like the fragrance of flowers, for her became a new life; a surrender of her whole being and whole soul, too pure and too noble for her to seek a new happiness upon new paths. And now he understood why that coveted Miss Anney of to-day, charming as a dream, brilliant, surrounded by affluence and arousing admiration, wrote to him that she had a heart not of foreign books but of a Polish village-simple and faithful. He understood also why the letter was signed "Hanka." Suddenly and irrevocably were banished all his suspicions, and her words, "my life from the moment of the departure from Rzeslewo has been pure," touched him to the extent that he began to upbraid himself that he should for a moment have thought that it could have been otherwise. At once he seemed to himself to be little, mean, and unworthy of that noble and exalted soul. But through his heart and head there coursed during the last moments so many thoughts, impressions, and feelings that he was uncertain whether the final sensibility of his own shortcomings and wretchedness would be lasting. Nevertheless, he was seized with an ever-increasing tenderness, and more and more became obliterated that difference between Hanka and Miss Anney which was so irritating to him in the first moments. Now, on the contrary, the recollection that this simple girl of old and that fascinating lady of to-day were one and the same woman penetrated him with a kind of thrill, resembling a thrill of joy. The memory that at one time he possessed the other began to waken in him, as it were, a hunger and a new passion for the present one, and the thought of her charms intensified the play of his young blood. But he strove to stifle within him those impressions with the consciousness of the responsibilities which were imposed upon him. Above all things he propounded to himself the question. What should a man of honor do who had betrayed and therefore wronged a girl, almost a child, who was in love with him, and later, after a few years, met her under a changed name and fell in love with her? There was only one answer; even if he did not fall in love, if her love continued, he ought to assume all the consequences of his acts. If she remained a simple-minded rustic who never could understand him, or if she had deviated from the path of rectitude, even in such a case, it would not, for his vexed soul, be sufficient reason for washing his hands and withdrawing from the affair; and so much the more, since the girl had bridged the intellectual and social chasm which separated them, and in addition ennobled her own soul and had not ceased to love. "Yes it is so. I would spit in my own eyes," said Ladislaus (not thinking at that moment that in practice an act like that would be a trifle difficult to perform), "if I hesitated any longer. There is only one thing to do and I will do that at once." Having formed this resolution, he took a deep breath like a man, from whose heart a heavy load has fallen-and as much as he at first became little in his own eyes, so now he began to gain in stature. He did not, however, propound the question, what would happen if Miss Anney did not have such wondrous eyes, gazing with a heavenly streak, nor such a countenance, whose color reminded him of the petals of a white rose, nor those other charms which attracted his eyes. He said to himself that many of his acquaintances could not afford to form a similar resolution; he was pleased with himself; and that it was easier for him to do so because he was impelled thereto by his heart and senses, he deemed not as lessening the worthiness of the act itself, but as his own good fortune. He foresaw, however, that he would yet have to do with his mother as well as with the so called opinion of society, which is not concerned about principles but only about gossip, and which seeks, above all things, food for its own stupid malice. But he expected to reconcile his mother, and as to the malicious, smiling ironically upon the slightest provocation, his nostrils, distended at the very thought, and his clenched teeth boded them no good. But this anticipated knightly action was a matter of the future; in the meantime his impetuous nature urged him to immediate action. He determined to go to his mother at once and definitely come to an understanding with her. Glancing, however, at his watch, he became aware of the fact that it was almost three o'clock in the morning. In view of this, that was impossible. Not feeling, however, the least need of sleep, and desiring absolutely to do something, he sat down to write letters. First, he inclosed Miss Anney's letter in an envelope, because he wanted to send it to his mother before the decisive interview took place; after which he started to write to Miss Anney, but soon stopped, as it occurred to him that since he gave his word that he would remain silent for a week, he did not have the right to do it. Instead, after a brief deliberation, he wrote a few words to Pani Otocka, praying that she would permit him to visit her that day.
