The Argonauts

by Eliza Orzeszkowa

CHAPTER VI

For the first time surely in that city, separated from England by lands and seas, a certain number of people, very limited, it is true, might admire small, bachelor's apartments, fitted up with tapestry, sculpture, and stained-glass, from the London factory of Morris, Faulkner, Marshall & Co. The drawing-room was not large, but there was in it absolutely nothing which had its origin elsewhere than in that factory founded by a famous poet and member of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The famous poet and artist, William Morris, had become a manufacturer for the purpose of correcting aesthetic taste in the multitude, and filling people's dwellings with works of pure beauty. The objects in this apartment were really beautiful. The tapestry on the walls represented a series of pictures taken from romances of knighthood, and from marvellous legends: Tristan and Isolde, on the deck of a ship; Flor and Blancheflor, in a garden of roses; the monk Alberich, in a Dominican habit, descending into hell. The tapestry on the furniture was full of winged heads and fantastic flowers; on all sides were seen great art in weaving and masterly borders, which recalled the margins of old prayer-books. Dulled and dingy colors, producing the impression of things which had emerged from the mist of ages, and only glass window-screens, framed in columns and pointed arches, were brilliant with the colors of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The window-panes were stained with roses and with the figures of saints having pale profiles and wearing bright robes. On one of the tables was a bronze pulpit in the form of a Gothic chapel; in another place was a lamp-support, which represented the Triumph of Death; Death was a woman with the wings of a bat; she was in a flowing robe; she had curved talons on her feet, and a scythe in her hand. This was a sculptured copy of Orcagna, from the Campo Santo of Pisa. In the middle of the dining-room, which was seen beyond an open door, stood a table, in the style of the eighteenth century. Altogether simple was this table, and like those under which, instead of carpets, men (of that century) used to put a layer of hay. The side table (fourteenth century), with painted carvings; a box (fourteenth century, a copy from the Museum of Cluny), with fantastic beasts carved on its cover, and with small figures on the front side, on very narrow niches, figures representing the twelve peers of France; another box, which was in the bedroom, was like this one, but the carving which covered it represented the anointing of Louis XI at Rheims (Museum of Orleans). It stood at the feet of Brother Alberich, who, in his white habit, was entering the black jaws of hell; it took the place of a sofa, there being no sofa in the room. Both these boxes of wood and iron, immensely artistic, though merely copies of authentic relics, served as places in which to keep objects of art, and served as seats also. Besides these, there were only a few stools, with arms carved in trefoil shape (fourteenth and fifteenth century), and still fewer armchairs, immensely deep and wide—so-called cathedras—covered with most wonderful stuffs; but everything was there which was needed, if the dwelling was to preserve a purely Middle Age character as to style. In the air, slightly colored by the brightly stained-glass, hovered something archaic and exotic—hoary antiquity reigned—and a critical spirit with the odor of mysticism might be felt floating around there. But all this seemed quite comprehensible and natural to anyone who knew Baron Emil, the owner of that dwelling—a trained and exacting aesthete—moreover, the baron was of that school called Mediaeval; and as a Mediaevalist he professed homage for Middle Ages romances and legends; for subtle works of art and for inspirations touching a world beyond the present which resulted from them.

Three years before Maryan Darvid, in company with, or more strictly under the protection of Kranitski, entered for the first time this dwelling, which had been recently furnished. The baron had brought home, from one of the Mediterranean islands, the mortal remains of his mother, who had died just before; he had received from her a great inheritance, and to put his interests in order he had settled in his native city for a period. Kranitski, long a friend in the house of his father and mother, had known him from childhood, and exhibited on greeting him an outburst of tenderness. This amused the baron, but pleased him also a little. "He is a trifle odd, good, poor devil—on the whole: gentle, perfectly presentable, and active." Kranitski was very active. He went to the boundary to take out of the custom-house everything which had come to the baron's address from England; and then helped him in the arrangement of the dwelling, which was attended with considerable labor. Upholsterers and other assistants lost their heads at sight of those knights, ladies, monks, peers of France, and the Triumph of Death, which came out of the boxes. Kranitski was astonished at nothing, for he had read much, and knew many things also, but he could not be very enthusiastic in this case. When the installation was accomplished, with his active and skilful assistance, he thought: "The place is funereal, and there is little comfort here." He looked askance somewhat at the boxes with the peers of France and Louis XI. on them. The covers of these boxes, rough with carving, did not seem to him the most agreeable places to sit on. He said nothing, however, for he was ashamed to confess that he did not understand or did not favor that which was the flower of the newest exotic fashion. He visited the baron and spent many hours in his dwelling, and soon he took there a second man—a young friend of his. When Maryan Darvid found himself for the first time in the company and at the house of a Mediaevalist, he was confused, like a man who is standing in the presence of something immensely above him. Almost ten years older, the baron surpassed Maryan immeasurably in all branches of knowledge, both of books and life; and his little dwelling was a marvel of originality and outlay. Maryan felt poor both in body and spirit. Though a yearly allowance of six thousand received from his father had not been enough up to that time, it seemed to him then a chip, only fit to be kicked away. As to the mental side, he was simply ashamed that he could still find any pleasant thing in that world which surrounded him, and in the life which he was leading. Commonness, cheapness, vulgarity! The meaning of these words he understood clearly after he had been in the baron's society. Even earlier he had begun to feel the need of something loftier; something beyond those pleasures of the senses—of fancy and of vanity—which he had experienced, though these were considerable. The substance and nature of these pleasures lay on the surface—they were accessible to a considerable number of people. The baron, in the manner usual with him, speaking somewhat through his nose and teeth, said:

"We, the experienced and disenchanted, seek for new shivers, just as alchemists of the Middle Ages sought for gold. We are in search of the rare and of the novel."

In search of the rare and the novel in shivers, or universal impressions: sensuous, mental, and aesthetic, Maryan went once with the baron, and a second time alone, on a journey through Europe. He visited many countries and capitals. To investigate the Salvation Army, he joined its ranks for a period in England. In Germany he was connected with the almost legendary, politico-religious sect which bears the name Fahrende Leute; and, again, for some time, in an immense wagon drawn by gigantic Mechlenburgers, he wandered through the mountainous Hartz forest and along the banks of the picturesque Saal; he spent most time in Paris, where, with the theosophists he summoned up spirits, and with the decadents, otherwise known as incoherents, and still otherwise as the accursed poets; in the club of hashish-eaters he had dreams and visions brought on by using narcotics. Besides, he saw many other rare and peculiar things; but he was ever hampered by slender financial means and the need of incurring great debts; and was irritated by the impossibility of finding anything which could satisfy him permanently, or, at least, for a long period. He felt satisfactions, but brief ones. Everything of which he had dreamed seemed less after he had attained it—more common, weaker than in his imagining. The brightness was dimmed; on the glitter there were defects; the warm inspirations which came from afar, grew stiff when they were touched, stiffened, as oil does when floating on water. In the taste of things, sweetness and tartness became insipid and nauseous, the moment they reached his palate.

This was by no means a surfeit devoid of appetites; but, on the contrary, such an immense flood of appetites that the insurgent wave of them struck the region of the impossible with fury, because it could not rush over that barrier. This was also an inflammation of the fancy, which had risen from an active mind, and which early and numerous experiences had turned into a festering wound. Finally, it was also the placing of self on some imagined summit, standing apart and aloft, beyond and above all. I—and the rabble. What is not I, and a handful like me—is the rabble. What is to be mine cannot be of the rabble; what is of the rabble must be not of mine. This pride was not of birth or money; it might be called nervous mental arrogance. Mental summits other than those of the rabble, and other requirements of the nerves; the highest bloom of human civilization—sickly, but the highest; the crash, but also the coronation of mankind. In all this there was a principle—one, but indestructible: the respect of individuality; the preservation of it from all limitations and changes which might come from outside; a respect reaching the height of worship. Everything might be, according to time and place, a painted pot; but individuality (that is, the way in which a man's wishes, tastes, way of thinking were fashioned) was sacred—the only sacred thing. It was not permitted to give this into captivity to anyone or anything, or to submit it to criticisms, or corrections. I am what I am; and I will remain myself. I will and I am obliged to know how to will—something like the superhuman preached by Friedrich Nietsche. The baron's dwelling was not only original and fabulously expensive, but it had in itself besides, that which the Germans define by the word Stimmung. A number of young polyglots examined for a long time various languages of Europe to find a word which would answer best to the German Stimmung, till Maryan first, possessing the greatest linguistic capacity, came on the Polish expression nastroj (tone of mind). Yes, they agreed, universally, that the baron's dwelling produced a tone of mind; an impression not of what was in it, but of something of which it was the mysterious expression or symbol. It produced an impression which had its cause beyond this world. To believe in something beyond this world does not mean to profess a religion—as that of Buddha, Zoroaster, or Chrystos. No, of course not; that would be well for early ages and infantile people; ..old ones, too, run wild after fables, for the principle of the beautiful is in these fables; but they do not let fables lead them off by the nose. An impression from beyond the world is something entirely different; it is a shiver of delights which are unknown here, and only anticipated, coming from a world inaccessible to the senses. That such a world exists is shown by the enormous poverty of this one, and the mad monotony of those sources of pleasure which are contained in the world accessible to human senses. A poet is so far a poet, an aesthete so far an aesthete, as he is able, by intuition and unheard-of delicacy of nerves, to burst into the world above the senses and to experience the taste, or rather the odor, which goes before it. For it is an absolute condition that the feeling should be hazy, something in the nature of an odor; or, better still, the echo of an odor. No key of a musical instrument is to be touched; no definite features are to be drawn; the tone of mind alone is to be produced. The baron's dwelling gave the tone of mind for another world. He and his associates believed in another world, beyond the earth and the grave; on the basis of the poverty and commonness of the world before the grave—that is, in despair of the case. For them it was not subject to doubt—that world, the slight odors of which flew to them in moments when they were in the tone of mind, was filled with perfect beauty, nothing but beauty; a beauty which, in this world, even by itself alone, raises men above the level of the rabble. If this beauty did not exist, we should be justified in accepting Hartmann's theory of the collective suicide of mankind, and in throwing a "bloody spittle of contempt" at life. A "bloody spittle," as is known from Arthur Rimbaud's sonnets on consonants, stands before the eyes of everyone who pronounces the vowel i, just as the vowel a brings up the picture of "black, shaggy flies, which buzz around terribly fetid objects."

"Ah, no, my friend! No, no! That passes my power! In heaven's name I beg you not to say another word!"

With this exclamation Arthur Kranitski, like a pike out of water, struggled in the immensely deep cathedra; and, with his arms in the air kept calling out:

"Terribly fetid objects! Bloody spittle! that is not poetry—it is not even decent! And those shaggy flies whirling around—that—No! I feel a nausea, which mounts to my throat. No, my friends, I will never agree that that is poetry!"

His voice broke, so wounded was he in his aesthetic conceptions. The young men laughed. That dear, honest Pan Kranitski is an innocent. In spite of his forty and some years clearly sounded, and his romantic experiences, his love for good eating and other nice things, the highest point of extravagance of all sorts for him were Boccaccio, Paul de Kock, Alfred Musset—simpletons, or babies.

Kranitski, after his first impression, had a feeling of shame.

"Pardon, my dears! An innocent! Not so much of an innocent as may seem to you. I am far from being an innocent; I understand everything and am able to experience everything. But, do you see, there is a difference in tastes. Clearness, simplicity, harmony, these are what I like, but yours—yours—"

Again he was carried away by aesthetic indignation, so, throwing himself back in the chair, with outspread arms, he finished:

"Your making poetry of spittle and foul odor is—do you know what? it is sprinkling a cloaca with holy water! That is what it is."

In the little drawing-room between the screens of stained glass and that part of the wall on which a knight of the Pound Table was bowing to Isolde stood a small organ, and before the organ, at the midday hour, sat Baron Emil playing one of the grandest fugues of Sebastian Bach. Small and fragile, in his morning dress of yellowish flannel, in stockings with colored stripes, and shoes of yellow leather with very sharp tips, he was resting his shoulder against the arm of the chair carved in a trefoil (fourteenth century); he stretched his arms stiffly and rested his long bony fingers on various keys of the piano. His delicate, sallow features had an expression of great solemnity; his small, blue eyes looked dreamily into space, and from the glass shade, brightened by the sunlight falling in through the window, purple and blue rays fell on his faded forehead and ruddy, closely cut hair.

Besides the baron, who was playing, was present Kranitski, who had come an hour before and heard from the servant that the baron was sleeping yet. But that was not true, for a few minutes after Kranitski heard farther back in the building an outburst of female laughter, to which the nasal voice of the baron, who spoke rather long about something, gave answer. The guest smiled and whispered to the "Triumph of Death," at which he was looking, "Lili Kerth."

Then he sank into the cathedra so that in spite of his lofty stature he almost disappeared in it. Soon the baron appeared at the door, and, accustomed to seeing Kranitski at various times, he nodded to him with a brief "Bon jour!" and turned to the organ. Sitting at the organ he threw these words over his arm:

"We expect Maryan at lunch."

"But she?" inquired Kranitski from the depth of the long and high arms of the cathedra.

"She will finish her toilet and go."

Then he played the Bach fugue. He played, and Kranitski, sank in the chair, listened and grew sadder and sadder. During recent days he had grown evidently old; he had become thin; wrinkles had appeared on his forehead. His person had lost elasticity and self-confidence, lie looked like a man who had received a heavy blow, but he was, as always, dressed carefully, the odor of perfumes was around him, and a colored handkerchief appeared in his coat pocket. In presence of the baron's music he grew sad and then sadder. That music made the place more and more church-like. The figures of saints on the shade under the golden haloes seemed to melt in profound adoration. The "Triumph of Death" spread its wings on the background of subdued colors in the chamber; in that atmosphere the organ and silence sang a majestic duet. Kranitski began to feel the tone of mind mightily. His shoulders bent forward mechanically; he took out of his pocket the gold cigarette case, and thought, while turning it in his fingers:

"Everything passes! Everything is behind me—love and the rest! The grave swallows all things. The days fly, like dust, fly into the past—into eternity! Eternity! the enigma."

All at once into the duet, sung by the organ and silence, broke the loud rattle of a door, then the rustle of silk skirts, till there had shot through the dining-room, and halted in the door of the drawing-room, a creature who was pretty, not large, excessively noisy, and active of body. She had a short skirt, small feet, a fur-lined cape of the latest style, and a gigantic hat which shaded a small, dark, thin, wilted face, with eyes burning like candles and hair gleaming like Venetian gold. The silk, the sable, the incredibly long ostrich feathers, the diamonds in her ears, and the loud burst of laughter cut through the music of Bach like a silver saw.

"Eh bien, ne veus-tu pas me dire bon jour, toi, grand beta? Tiens, voila!" (Well, wilt thou not say good-day to me, thou great beast? Here it is!) With the expression voila! was heard a loud kiss, impressed on the check of the baron, then Lili Kerth, the gleaming of silk, diamonds, eyes, and hair turned toward the door of the antechamber and saw Kranitski.

"Oh, te voila aussi, vieux beau!" (Oh, here thou art too, old beau!) She sprang toward the cathedra, and, wringing her hands, exclaimed:

"What a funereal face!" And she spoke on, or rather babbled on in French: "Hast disappointments? That is bad! But one must not think of them. Do as I do. I have disappointments, but I mock at them. This is how I treat disappointments."

She made a stop so elastic that her little foot flew into the air, and she touched Kranitski's chin with the point of her shoe. That was a model indication of the method with which one should treat disappointments.

"Now adieu to the company!" cried she, and rattling her bracelets she vanished.

In the chamber there was silence again, in the midst of which Tristan gave a knightly bow to Isolde, and the monk Alberich let himself down into the jaws of hell; "Triumph of Death" spread her bat-wings, and the saints with their golden haloes crossed their pale hands on their bright robes.

The baron was sitting before the organ with his head dropped to his breast. Kranitski, buried in the cathedra, panted aloud for some seconds till he said, with a complaining voice:

"It is abominable! I do not wish a cocotte to throw her foot on my neck when I am thinking of eternity. What confounded tastes you have! Immediately after leaving Lili Kerth to play that divine Bach. Nonsense! mixture! I am not a monk, far from it—but such shaking up in one bottle of the profane and the sacred, no, that is vileness swaddled in art. Yes, yes, I beg forgiveness once more, but in the Holy Scriptures something is said about a gold ring in a pig's nose. Voila!"

The baron smiled under his ruddy mustache and said, after a while:

"That is subtle and not to be understood by everyone. Bach after Lili Kerth—that is the bite, that is the irony of things. Do you know Baudelaire's quatrain?"

He stood up, and, without declamation, even carelessly, through his nose and teeth, gave the quatrain:

"Quand chez le debauche l'aube blanche et vermeil,

Entre en societe de l'Ideal rongeur,

Par l'operation d'un mystere vengeur,

Dans la brute assoupie un Ange se reveille."

With his hands in the pockets of his flannel sack he paced through the room.

Maryan had translated that quatrain quite beautifully. Without interrupting his pacing he repeated the translation.

The bell rang in the antechamber; Maryan entered the drawing-room. He was paler than usual and had dark lines under his eyes, which were very bright. Kranitski rushed from the cathedra, and, seizing the young man by both hands, looked into his face with tenderness:

"At last, at last! I have not seen you for almost a fortnight. I have not left the house. I had a little hope that you would visit me."

"All right, all right!" answered Maryan, and touching the hand of the baron, he sat down on the box on which was the anointing of Louis XI, he rested his shoulders on the bare foot of Alberich and became motionless.

Maryan continued to be so motionless that not only the limbs of his body, but the features of his face seemed benumbed. Had it not been for his eyes, which were gleaming brightly, he might have been mistaken at a distance for a stuffed and elegantly dressed manikin. Baron Emil and Kranitski knew what this meant. According to Maryan that was a chill into which he fell always after disappointment or disenchantment. He was possessed at such times by a lack of will, which made all movements, even those which were physical, unendurable and difficult. At the same time he had such a contempt for all things on earth that it did not seem worth the while to him to move hand or lips for any cause. Some French writer has called such a condition of desiccation of the heart's interior. Maryan found that definition quite appropriate. When he sat motionless, deaf and dumb, or walked like an automaton moved by springs, he felt exactly as if the interior of his heart were drying up.

The baron, too, passed through similar states with some differences, however, for feeling contempt instead of lack of will, he felt a "red anger," or what the French call colere rouge. He was carried away then by the wish to shut his fist, heat and break, in fact he did beat the servants sometimes, and break costly articles. He considered the desiccation of his friend's heart in its interior portions with respect, even with sympathy. He, with hands thrust into his yellowish flannel pockets, walked up and down in the chamber and hissed through his teeth:

"We are all stunted. We are breaking down! bah! it is time. The world is old. Children of an aged father born with internal cancer."

Kranitski, hearing this, thought: "Why should a man break down and get a cancer when he is young and rich?" But he did not oppose. He pitied Maryan. He looked at him with an expression of eyes similar to that with which loving nurses look on sick or capricious children.

At lunch Maryan's handsome face was sallow and motionless as a wax mask; as a wax mask it stood out on the background of the high arms of the chair. He was as silent as a stone. He had no appetite. He ate only a little caviar, and then fell to swallowing an endless number of small cups of black coffee, which the baron himself prepared, according to some special recipe, and poured out. The baron himself drank goblet after goblet of wine, and as to the rest he yawned a great deal more than he ate. But Kranitski's appetite was a success. After some weeks of Widow Clemens' meagre kitchen he ate eggs, cutlets, cheese, till his eyes were gleaming. According to his old acquaintances gastronomy had always been his weak point—and women. But he drank little and did not play cards. In spite of hearty eating he did not forget the duties of a welcome guest. He kept up conversation with the master of the house, who told him carelessly of a rare and beautiful picture found at some collector's.

"A real, a genuine Overbeck. We were to examine it with Maryan, but since Maryan did not come—" He turned to young Darvid: "Why did you not come?"

There was no answer. The waxen mask, supported on the arm of the chair, remained motionless and gazed with gloomy eyes into space.

"Overbeck!" began Kranitski, and added, "a pre-Raphaelite."

Over Maryan's fixed features ran a quiver caused by better thoughts. Without the least movement of features or posture he grumbled:

"Nazarene."

Kranitski corrected himself hurriedly and with a shamed face.

"Yes, pardon! A Nazarene."

"But, naturally, a Nazarene pure blood," said the baron, growing animated, "the uninitiated confound Nazarenes with pre-Raphaelites quite erroneously. They form a separate school. This Overbeck is a find. I will say more, it is a discovery. If it were dragged out of that den and taken abroad one might do a splendid business with it."

Warmed by a considerable quantity of wine, his complexion made somewhat rosy, the baron fell to giving Kranitski an idea which had circled long in his brain: "There is in Poland a number of ancient families who are failing financially, and who possess many remnants of former wealth. There are frequently things of high value not only objects of pure art, but the most various products of former wealth and taste; as, for instance, hangings, tapestry belts, china, tapestry, furniture, and jewellery. The owners, pushed to the wall by evil circumstances, would sell willingly, and for a trifle, articles which have great value now in both hemispheres. One must search for them, it is true, almost as the humanists once sought for Greek and Latin manuscripts, but whoever could find, purchase, and sell these would open a real mine of great profits. In Europe, England is the country most favorable for commercial operations of this kind, but the richest field is America. To buy here for a trifle and sell in the United States for gold weighed out to you. But, before beginning business, one should go to America, examine the field, form connections, take initial steps. Above all approach the undertaking with considerable capital and great knowledge."

While explaining his idea and the plan of operations which had come to his head long before, and drawing from the glass excellent liquid, the baron became animated, grew young, his little eyes under their ruddy brows gleamed sharply. And even Maryan said all at once in grumbling tones:

"It is an idea!"

"Is it not?" laughed the baron.

Kranitski listened in silence, with curiosity. Then, halting a little, he said, with some indecision:

"If your project becomes a fact then you will take me as your agent. I know a little of those things; I know where to look for them, and I offer you my earnest services—very earnest."

In spite of the jesting tone one could note in his imploring look, and in his smile full of timid, uncertain quivers, that he felt keenly the need of fixing himself to someone or something and escaping from the great void yawning under him.

All three lighted cigars and went to the drawing-room where Maryan sat again on the Louis XI box, Kranitski sank into a cathedra, and the baron opened at the window one sheet of an English paper, which shielded him before the light from his knees to the crown of his head. He was silent rather long, then from behind the paper curtain was heard his nasal voice:

"Crushing!"

"What?" inquired Kranitski.

"The fair at Chicago."

And he read aloud an account of the preparations for the colossal exhibition which was to be in that American city.

He accompanied the reading with judgments which contained comparisons: The old part of the world—the old civilizations, the old common methods and proceedings.

Besides narrow spaces, familiar horizons—too familiar. But America was something not worn to rags yet. By a wonderful chance the baron had not been there, but when he thought of America Rimbaud's verses occurred to him. He rose, and, walking through the chamber, gave the following:

"Divine vibration of green seas,

The peace of fields spotted with animals;

Silences traversed by worlds, by angels."

"And by millions!" called Maryan from the foot of the white monk
Alberich.

He took his shoulders from the monk's robe, and added:

"Nowhere are there such colossal fortunes, and such powerful means of getting them, as on those fields spotted with animals."

And all at once, as it were, the desiccating interior of his heart became animated, he rose and began to walk quickly through the chamber, passed the slowly walking baron, and said:

"It is an idea! One must dwell on it. I must go there, or somewhere else—do something with myself. I am driven from this place by one of the greatest disappointments which I have ever known. I reached the bottom of disenchantments yesterday. That is why I did not come to look at the Overbeck. I was buried. My last painted pot burst. I was disappointed in a man for whom I had felt something like honor."

He spoke English. The baron asked him in English also:

"What has happened?"

And Kranitski, with a little worse accent in the same language, repeated the question a number of times.

Maryan, continuing to walk through the chamber, narrated the conversation with his father and the ultimatum given him. The baron laughed noiselessly, and inquired; Kranitski gave out cries of indignation. Maryan, with a fiery face and feverish movement, added:

"I had thought that man worthy of my admiration. Logical, consequent, unconquerable, formed of one piece. A magnificent monolith. No sentiments, no prejudices. Permitting no one to disturb the development of his individuality. I understood that his method of rearing me, and then pushing me to the highest spheres of life, pointed to this, that I was to live for his honor. I was to be one of the columns of that temple which he had raised to his own glory. But just that absoluteness with which he used everything for his own purposes roused in me homage. The power of producing was in him equal to his power of egotism. So must it be with every individuality fashioned by nature not on a model, but originally. I did not know him much, and desired a nearer acquaintance. I was certain that we should understand each other perfectly; that I should behold from nearby a magnificent monolith. Meanwhile it was stuck over with labels of various kinds of trash, and covered with half a hundred stains of the past—"

"He remembered the school of training and labor in time," laughed
Kranitski.

"Peste!" hissed the baron. "What a rheumatism of thought!"

"Moral principles!" added Kranitski, "he himself practises them beautifully. Let him give even half of his millions to that poverty which is ashamed to beg. Oh, he will not! He will not do that! By the help of moral principles it is easy to put sacred burdens on other men's shoulders."

"That is it," added Maryan, "on other men's shoulders you have hit the point, my old man. Yes! So many years he cared for nothing; he considered nothing; now on a sudden he has thrown down the edifice which he himself built. I know not as to others; but, as for me, I shall stick to my rights. I cannot permit myself to fall a victim to this sad accident, that my father is a mental rheumatic."

He stopped, meditated a moment, then added:

"That is even more than rheumatism of thought; it is the exudation of a decaying past, filling the brain with the corruption—of a corpse."

"Corruption of a corpse! very apt this expression!" exclaimed the baron.

Kranitski made a wry face in the cathedra, and muttered:

"No, no. What horror! I will never agree to that phrase."

But no one heard this quiet protest. Now the baron in his turn, walking more and more quickly through the room, spoke on.

Maryan remained sitting on the Louis XI box while the baron walked and complained of the narrowness of relations and the low level of civilization in the city:

"This is the real fatherland of darned socks. Everything here has the mustiness of locked up store-houses. There is a lack of room and ventilation. In England William Morris, a great poet, establishes a factory for objects pertaining to art, and makes millions. I beg you to show anything similar in this place. Darvid has made a colossal fortune only because he was not blind, and did not hold on to his father's fence. Nationality and fa-ther-land, each is a darned sock—one of those labels which men with parti-colored clothes paste on a gate before which diggers are standing. One must escape from this position. One must know how to will."

The baron said, that as soon as he could bring certain plans of his to completion and regulate certain property interests, and even before regulating them, he would occupy himself with completing his new plan. He turned to Maryan:

"Will you be my partner? It would be difficult for me to get on without you. You have an excellent feeling for art—you are subtle—"

"Why not," answered Maryan. "But one should go first of all and examine the field; one should go to America before the exhibition."

"Naturally, before the exhibition, so as to begin action before it is over. In the question of capital—"

"I will sell my personal property, which has some value, and incur another debt," said Maryan, carelessly.

The baron halted; he thought awhile; his faded face took on that expression of roguery which the French call polissonnerie; joyousness seized him.

"We will shoot off!" cried he; and he made a movement with his foot like that which a street-sweeper makes to catch a bark shoe thrown up in the air.

Maryan rose, shook himself out of his lethargy, and said, almost with delight:

"It is an idea. To America!"

Then from the abyss of the immensely deep and broad cathedra
Kranitski's voice was heard, orphan-like, timid:

"But will you take me with you, my dears? When you shoot off you will take me with you, will you not?"

There was no answer. The baron was sitting already before the organ and had begun to play some grand church composition; in the dignified sound of that music Tristan made a knightly bow to Isolde, and the "Triumph of Death," with its dark outline, was reflected on the background of Alberich's white habit, while the saints painted with golden haloes on the windows clasped their pale hands above their bright robes.