A wonderful immemorial forest, through which, clad in armour, knights are riding on white steeds. Most lofty oaks, strong-limbed and gnarled, with black trunks and dark-blue foliage, strike their roots deep into the ground. Amid mosses in hue like malachite, ferns put forth their sprays of sea-green lace. Fairies dance merrily among the trees, and scatter round them pearls of ringing laughter. And far away, lost in reverie, upon a dark, enchanted lake there floats a swan. A strange, clear, chilly splendour illuminates the twilight.
All at once a thunderbolt, a red thunderbolt falls: and the oak forest and the lake vanish into the depths of the earth. … Yet thunderstorms only take place on sultry summer days.
No, no, all this was but a dream.
Now there comes before me the infinite wilderness of my own ice-plains, hard-frozen beneath the cold and glassy skies. I am afraid, I am horribly afraid, I cannot breathe, seeing those endless plains of ice, under that canopy of green and frosty light: it is the kingdom of my soul!
But far away, at the skyline, where without warmth the Aurora Borealis beams, there stands a huge statue, a basalt-hewn statue. This recks not of the unbounded wilderness, nor of the chilly gleams of the Northern Lights, nor of the stars, those silver eyes of Time. Tranquil and undismayed it stands. That is Roslawski.
On I march towards him, plodding through the deep and drifting snow; at his feet, I fall upon my knees.
And I beseech him to hide the boundless wilderness from my sight; to protect me from the icy air of death, so that I may dwell in this land of my soul, and yet not die. “For behold, this day I am weak exceedingly, this day I stand in fear of the plains of ice.”
But he says: “Here in the snows around me, you must first lay out a garden as of the tropics; and yourself must blossom into a flame-red and purple rose.”
And I make answer: “My lord, without the light of the sun, how is any rose to blow?”
Once more a thunderclap resounds. He is gone. I am all alone amid my ice-plains: and I live yet.
Bound I am, with fetters made of ice. The silvery wings of my soul are glittering under the canopy of heaven, and in the greenish splendour of the Northern Lights. She would not share with me my years of burning heat, and now she will not have me share this realm of hers. A snake is lying on my bosom, and, coiled about my neck, sucks the warm blood thence. …
We bid good night to Obojanski, and go out into the street together.
“I have to tell you something; or, rather, I have one question, only one, to put to you.” These are my first words.
“I am quite at your service.”
From the instant when I begin to speak, the sense of dread passes away from me, and an immense quietude takes its place.
“I must, however, lay down one condition. I will have from you no other answer save the word Yes or No. I do not wish—and this is of consequence to me—to hear any comments whatever. Do you agree?”
“Most willingly,” he returns, with a smile; “the condition that you lay down I certainly shall keep.”
“You must know then,” I go on, “that, since I became acquainted with you, I have known you for the only man who could make me happy. Some time ago, another man, one who deserves my sympathy and whom I trust, asked me to marry him. Being of opinion that, in the last resort, the knowledge that one is greatly loved may serve as a substitute for happiness, I have taken a month to think the matter over. My decision depends upon your answer. I ought perhaps to add that I can foresee what this is likely to be; but that I am very anxious to get absolute certainty on this point, lest I should at some future time have to reproach myself with having let my chance of happiness go by.”
There is a silence.
“May I venture to ask you to put your question in a more definite form?”
“Are you, or are you not, willing to marry me?”
Another silence.
“No: and yet, supposing that. …”
“Remember my condition.”
No more is said.
In front of my lodgings we bid each other a calm and friendly farewell.
The next morning, on my way to my office, I put a long scented envelope into a postbox. It is addressed to Janusz.
Nevertheless, the decision which it contains is—not to marry him.
Yes, I am now the bondslave of my soul: these my ice-plains, it is no longer mine to leave them.
I have done with suffering. … During all these long days and nights, I have not shed one tear. I do not suffer now: the agony-delirium has passed those limits, beyond which no difference is felt between joy and misery, beyond which there is no night of woe, that contrasts with day.
In the still autumn twilight, I am shut up in my dark and lonely room. Lest I should awake my soul, that has fallen asleep, I am pacing the soft carpet with noiseless steps.
I am in terror of the very movements which I myself make. Trembling with cold—or is it with my own emptiness of heart?—and leaning against my doorway in the darkness, wrapped in the folds of my soft shaggy portière, I open my swooning lips to utter a soundless cry, and look staring into the mobile fluttering dark with tired and quiet gaze.
I do not suffer; I exist—in a world wherein the night of woe no longer is a contrast with day, wherein there prevails a tranquil dusk, without sun and without stars.
There is no Ego of mine. I am beyond existence and beyond nothingness—in that world
