This day has been to me of so much importance that I am obliged to
muster all my calmness and self-possession to put down everything in
its proper order. Nevertheless, I cannot contain myself. The die is
cast, or as good as cast. I could not have gone on quietly, had I not
put that down.
And now I can begin. Sniatynski and his wife arrived here towards
noon, for an early dinner. He had to go back, as a new play of his
is coming out at the theatre. However happy we may be in our rural
seclusion, we are always delighted to see them. Aniela is great
friends with Pani Sniatynska, and I suppose there will be an exchange
of confidences. Pani Sniatynska guessed at the state of things, and
tried to put her hand to the wheel, to make the cart go a little
faster. She had only just arrived, when she said to my aunt:--
"How lovely and peaceful everything is here! No wonder the young
people there do not pine after the dissipations of town."
We both, Aniela and I, understood perfectly well that Pani Sniatynska,
calling us the young people, was not referring only to our age.
Besides, she repeated the same thing several times during dinner: "the
young people," "the young couple," as if making a pointed difference
between us two and the elder ladies. But there was such real sympathy
for us in the friendly eyes; such a pricking up of her little ears to
hear what we were saying to each other; and the little woman looked so
charming withal that I forgive her readily her good-natured meddling.
I have arrived at such a state of infatuation that this coupling of
our names rather gladdens than irritates me. Aniela too seemed to hear
it with pleasure. In her efforts to please the Sniatynskis and the
attentions she bestowed on them during dinner, she truly looked like a
young bride, who receives dear visitors for the first time in her new
home. At the sight of this my aunt's heart seemed to swell, and she
said many kind and polite things to both Sniatynskis. I noticed a
wonderful thing, which I should not believe had I not seen it with my
own eyes. Pani Sniatynska blushes up to her ears when anybody praises
her husband! To blush with pleasure when her husband is praised after
eight years of married life! Surely, I committed an egregious mistake
writing as I did about Polish women.
The dinner passed off very pleasantly. A married couple, like these
two, are born matchmakers. The very sight of them sets people
thinking: "If married life is like that, let us go and commit
matrimony." I at least saw it for the first time in a quite different
light,--not as the prose of life, a commonplace, more or less
skilfully disguised indifference, but as a thing to be desired.
Aniela evidently read our future in the same light; I saw it in her
eyes shining with happiness.
After dinner I remained in the dining-room with Sniatynski, who liked
a quiet talk over a glass of cognac after his coffee. The elder ladies
went to the drawing-room, and Aniela took Pani Sniatynska upstairs to
show her some photographs of Volhynia. I questioned Sniatynski about
his new play, the fate of which seemed to make him a little anxious.
Our conversation drifted on to those times when we both tried our
sprouting wings. He told me how afterwards, step by step, he had
worked his way upward; how he had been full of doubts, and still
doubted his power, in spite of having acquired a certain reputation.
"Tell me," I asked, "what do you do with your fame?"
"How do you mean what I do with my fame?"
"For instance, do you wear it as a crown on your head, or as a golden
fleece round your neck? do you put it over your writing-desk, or hang
it up in your drawing-room? I only ask as a man who has no idea what
to do with it if he once obtains it?"
"Let us suppose I have won it; the man must be deuced ill-bred
mentally either to wear the so-called fame as an ornament or to put it
up for show. I confess that at first it gratifies one's vanity; but
only a spiritual parvenu would find it sufficient to fill the whole
life, or take the place of real happiness. It is quite another thing
to be conscious you are doing good work; that the public appreciates
it, and that your work calls forth an echo in other minds,--a public
man has the right to feel pleased with that. But as to feeling
gratified when somebody, looking more or less foolish, comes up and
says: 'We are indebted to you for so much pleasure;' or, when a dinner
does not agree with me, our daily press remarks: 'We communicate
to our readers the sad news that our famous XX suffers from a
stomachache,'--pshaw! what do you take me for, that such a thing could
give me satisfaction?"
"Listen," I said, "I am not inordinately vain; but I confess that,
when people speak of my extraordinary talents, and regret that I make
not a better use of them, it flatters me; and though I feel more
than ever my uselessness, it gives me pleasure; humankind is fond of
approbation."
"That is because you pity yourself, and in that you are quite right.
But you are turning away from the question. I do not say that it would
give one pleasure to be called an ass."
"But the public esteem that goes hand in hand with fame?"
Sniatynski, who is very lively and always walks about the room,
sitting down on any table or chair, now sat on the window-sill, and
replied:--
"Public esteem? You are wrong there, old fellow; there is no such
thing. Ours is a strange society, dominated by a pure republican
jealousy. I write plays, work for the stage; very good. I have gained
a certain reputation; better still. Now, these plays excite the
jealousy,--of another playwright, you think? Not at all; it is the
engineer, the bank clerk, the teacher, the physician, the railway
official,--in short, people who never wrote a play in their
lives,--that envy you. All these in their intercourse will show that
they do not think much of you, will speak slightingly of you behind
your back, and belittle you on purpose, so as to add an inch or two to
their own height. 'Sniatynski? who is he? Yes, I remember; he dresses
at the same tailor as I.' Such is fame, my dear fellow."
"But if must be worth something, since people risk their lives for
it?"