Smilowicz has come to see me.
He, too, is mentally depressed at times: which I should never have suspected.
He edged himself into the very armchair in which Witold had been seated last evening. For some time he was silent; and then: “There are days,” he said, “when I think myself an idiot for having wasted my life over a mere shadow. Oh, how I envy you!”
“Why, is your life wasted?” I cried in amazement.
“You have been at our lodgings—and you have seen.” …
“Well?”
“You have seen all!”
“But your wife is a happy woman,” I said, trying to take the optimistic side of things; though all the time I was saying to myself (and I really don’t know why): “How is love possible between those two?”
“My wife may be so,” he said, slowly. “Sometimes I cannot.”
“They say it is a great thing to have children. Even if you do not attain the goal you aim at, there always remains something of you.”
My remark elicited no reply from him. I could see painful and bitter thoughts flit over his thin face, as he looked round the room.
“You have no end of flowers!” he murmured.
“These are all flowers of farewell. These at least you need not envy me.”
His face darkened.
“You know how ill I am. That is what makes me so hateful. Not that I regret life, but that I have nothing in life to regret losing.”
I did not answer.
“To know for sure that death is at hand gives you quite another outlook upon life. An extraordinary attachment to things positive springs up, together with an intense hate for abstractions. Each renunciation, each victory over self, is to you like a fresh nail in your coffin.”
“But you surely love your wife?” I asked him, after a pause.
“I do.”
“And your son, too?”
He gave a nod.
“Well, then. …” I tried to draw some comforting inference, but unsuccessfully. “Well, then. …” I repeated once more, and once more relapsed into helpless silence.
“Ah, how kind you are!” he said in a low voice, and looked at me for some time with a grateful expression. “And how beautiful besides!” he added unexpectedly.
I felt startled: mere instinct on my part, for I had no reason to fear. He glanced away from me, and turned his attention to some orchids that stood close to him, stroking them with his bony hand.
“When I ask myself now for what reason I did what I did, I can find no answer to my question. Such flowers as these; I have gone through life, always trampling upon them; why? Why should Obojanski cut them to pieces, that he may, in them and from them, hit upon some new abstraction or other—their genus, their species, their variety? Why do you call them flowers of farewell? Oh, now that I know how terrible the way of self-denial and virtue is, I should this day like to lie on a bed of flowers such as these.”
“I can answer to your question: You trampled the flowers, because you were a strong man.”
“Is love of life a weakness then?” He fell a-thinking.
“Perhaps it is. Perhaps I care for life for the same reason that made Voltaire confess before he died: vital energy giving way. And after all, life!”
Here I set to explain to him at great length that life is in reality an evil, and not worth regretting when it goes from us, that in its track it leaves a bitterness still greater than the bitterness of self-denial and self-control, and evokes a yet stronger reaction. …
To that he said: “Yes, the reaction which life brings is directed against life, and makes it easier to die. All the better.”
“It is well,” he added. “It is not after all life itself that I wish for. I wish only to be convinced—convinced by experience that life is an evil thing. This is all that I would have.”
When he left me, I presented him with a great many flowers, begging him, as a pretext, to carry them to his wife from me.
Looking out of the window, I saw him going his way, clad in a fur, notwithstanding the mildness of the weather, and pressing my flowers to his heart.
In the evening, I sent to Wiazewski, asking him to step in. I thought he would be some consolation to me; but though he made visible endeavours to show good humour, he had none. I therefore proposed we should take a walk.
It was a splendid night, fine and breezy, and steeped in the sweet, drowsy, dizzying perfume of coming spring. The lamplights twinkled away, far into the distance, like innumerable strings of diamonds; the streets were deserted, but brightly lit. The white moon was now and then visible above the irregular line of the housetops. All was picturesquely calm and cold—a condition that I especially like.
Our way led us down a great thoroughfare, along which a few belated carriages were passing.
Stephen was jesting; but it went against the grain. He was telling me about the tragical fate of some disappointed suitor.
Just in front of us, at the very corner of the street, and opposite the doorway of a large hotel, a brilliantly elegant equipage, coming at full speed, suddenly pulled up.
A servant ran to open the carriage-door. Witold jumped out nimbly, and helped a woman to descend.
Springing lightly from the step, and walking by his side at a rapid pace, magnificent in billowy furbelows and lace, and spreading around her an atmosphere of dainty odours, Iseult Lermeaux went in.
Witold’s eye caught mine at the very moment when, helping her out of the carriage, he was about to take her arm. In the glare of the electric lamps, I saw him turn deadly pale. He bowed instinctively; his arms dropped to his side: he was at a loss what to do. Wiazewski’s presence embarrassed him, and he stood like one transfixed. She turned round and also glanced at us.
And
