“Do you not think that the first step towards healing the ulcers of
society is to lay them bare?”
“Ugh! why write about them? We all know them too well! In life itself,
there is, I tell you, quite enough of sorrow and of miasma. You, so
young, may possibly not have as yet had any opportunity of coming into
contact with them.... No, no: why should we ourselves spoil the short
sweet moments when it is possible to dream?”
She then proposed that we should take a rest on a seat of bamboo-work,
ensconced amongst exotic plants and shrubs in large green tubs. As soon
as we had sat down, her trained pet lamb came and lay down on the skirt
of her dress.
“Every one ought to have some sacred book—some Bible or other—ought he
not?” she asked, after a short silence. “Alas! there is no one, with
ever so little knowledge of philosophy, who can possibly believe in the
existence of God—and all the rest of it.
“But we can at any rate respect the poetry which religion contains, and
the feelings of those who have not as yet lost their faith: is it not
so?”
“Certainly,” I replied with the utmost gravity.
“Well, the Bible which I could not go to sleep without reading, and out
of which I read portions daily instead of my prayers, is that book of
legends by Voragine.... Do you know it?”
“Oh, yes,” I assented, “the _Golden Legend_.”
“Oh, what a world of poetry there is in it! What treasures of freshness
and simplicity of feeling!”
“Well, I say! if they are all of her kidney!” was all I remarked to Mme.
Wildenhoff, as I returned with her after our half-hour’s call at
Wieloleski’s. I felt a good deal bored, and mused over the meaning of
the well-known aphorism:
_Dans la bête assouvie un ange se réveille._[1]
Footnote 1:
When the brute’s gorged, an angel wakes within it.
For some time Imszanski has been spending his evenings at home! He
either goes out later in the evening, or not at all, and Martha’s hopes
are reviving within her; but I do not take this conversion of his very
seriously.
We three sit together frequently; now and then Czolhanski and Owinski,
or Rosuchowski drop in.
One peculiarity about Owinski is the continual vague absent look in his
eyes, caused by his extremely short sight. He cannot see two paces in
front of him, and distinguishes people by their voices only. His facial
muscles are in constant play; and he never smiles but with set teeth. He
is very far indeed from being good-looking; yet I do not wonder at
Gina’s loving him to distraction.
Witold has been pleased to take me as his confidante now. He is probably
feeling compunction for his recent behaviour, somewhat late in the day.
Life, taken in general, is a barren waste. His theory of love does not
permit him to hold innocent those delusions of the senses which are
usually termed “bits of love-making,” though in reality, they and love
have nothing in common. They are then evil; but they have become
necessary evils, to which men have in the course of ages completely
accustomed themselves; evils from which women—he means of course those
of the better classes—are free, and against which they ought to be
guarded with the utmost care. By means of this reasoning, he considers
his relations with Martha to be all they should be; for he always
endeavoured to spare her, and to preserve her high ideals, and her
feelings of purity.
I could not help smiling as he said this, knowing as I did how little
his intention had been realized.
But now he too seems to be tiring of the life he leads—this howling
wilderness of a life. “These women are so shallow, so mindless, so
fatuous! Their own looseness of morals is the keynote which decides
every one of their acts.”