Idalia felt it her duty to try and comfort me. A kind, lovable girl she
is. And she knows how to deal skilfully with “semi-tones” of every
description. Her eyes are gentle, her face a little faded and careworn;
there is something maternal about her.
“We take everything so very seriously, so very much _au tragique_,” she
says. “And that, you see, puts us more in their power. We should analyse
things less, and learn rather to glide over them. Analysis is a
two-edged weapon: it easily turns and wounds you. Do endeavour to pass
along with a cursory look about you, even with half-closed eyes; things
will seem different at once. Don’t cry any more: and if he should come,
the servant is to let him in, is she not?”
“On no account; on no account;” I cried, in a fury.
“But why?” she murmured, gently stroking my hair. “Why? To let him
in—that does not bind you in any way: you are free to act as you like.
And why not hear what he has to say?”
“Because I have heard him already.”
“And you would not believe him? You were not right in that. It is so
easy to believe!... And whether the thing is true or not, what does it
matter to you? What is true in some part of time may be false in some
part of space; and _vice versa_. A fact is true, but only for the day.
When he is beside you, and assures you of his love, you will have the
greatest of all truths: the indubitable truth in the present. What took
place before?... What is to come later?... Never mind: it is all the
same!”
And I think she is in the right.
Every now and then Czolhanski comes and calls upon me. He came
yesterday, too. This, I think, is rather too much. God! how I detest
that man!... He enters, sits down, stays for three mortal hours, pays me
a few compliments, lets out a few commonplaces about the lamentable
position of a journalist: a man untidy, unshaven, rather dirty in his
ways, and very pretentious: his finger-nails are in mourning and his
hands always moist. No use to take up a newspaper, even to be more
uncivil to him still: he will not take the hint and go. Once he wrote a
sonnet to me! Journalism has evidently been the death of his poetical
talent. But, Lord! what does it all matter after all? He _will_ kiss my
hands, though I always beg him not to, he disgusts me so. If I were in
his place, I should go and hang myself! And he—he is quite unaware of my
feelings, and very much self-satisfied.
Yesterday Radlowski came as well, and for the first time, under the
pretext of a message from Gina. His company would be most pleasant, for
he is so very extremely young; and his eyes sparkle like a diamond in
the sun, with a sort of delectation so lively that it seems unnatural;
painfully so. He has again asked me to sit for my portrait.