"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?"
Sniatynski grew thoughtful, and replied with a certain gravity:—
"In private life it is worth something; you can make a footstool of it for the woman you love."
"You will gain a new fame by this definition."
Sniatynski rushed at me with lively impetuosity.
"Yes, yes; put all your laurels into a cushion, go to the dear one, and say to her: 'This for which people risk their lives; this which they consider supreme happiness, appreciate more than wealth—I have got it, striven for it; and now put your dear feet on it at once.' If you do this, you will be loved all your life. You wanted to know what fame is good for, and there you are."
Further discussions were cut short by the entrance of Pani Sniatynska and Aniela. They were dressed for going out to the hot-houses. What an imp of mischief lurks in that little woman. She came up to her husband to ask his permission to go out, which he granted, insisting only that she should wrap herself up warm; she turned to me and said with a roguish smile—
"You will let Aniela go, will you not?"
That Aniela should blush furiously was only natural, but that I, an old stager, a razor sharpened against the strops of so many experiences, should have betrayed so much confusion, I cannot forgive myself. But, putting on a semblance of self-possession, I went up to Aniela, and raising her hand to my lips, said:—
"It is Aniela who gives orders at Ploszow, and I am her humble subject."
I should have liked to take Sniatynski with me and join the excursion, but refrained. I felt a want to speak about Aniela, my future marriage, and I knew that sooner or later Sniatynski himself would broach the question. I gave him an opening after the ladies had left us by saying:—
"And do you still believe as firmly as ever in your life-dogmas?"
"More than ever, or rather, the same as ever. There is no expression more worn to tatters than the word 'love;' one scarcely likes to use it; but between ourselves, I tell you; love in the general meaning, love in the individual sense does not permit of criticism. It is one of the canons of life. My philosophy consists in not philosophizing about it at all—and the deuce take me if for the matter of that, I consider myself more foolish than other people. With love, life is worth something; without, it is not worth a bag of chaff."
"Let us see what you have to say about individual love—or better still, put in its place woman."
"Very well, let it be woman."
"My good friend, do you not perceive on what brittle foundation you are building human happiness?"
"On about as brittle a foundation as life—no more nor less!"
I did not want to drift into a discussion of life and death, and pulled Sniatynski up.
"For mercy's sake, do not generalize about individual happiness. You chanced to find the right woman, another might not."
He