“In the botanical garden at Wilno I have seen those vaunted trees that grow in the east and the south, in that fair Italian land—which of them can be compared to our trees? The aloe with its long stalk like a lightning rod? Or the dwarfish lemon tree with its golden balls and lacquered leaves, short and dumpy, like a woman who is small and ugly, but rich? Or the much-praised cypress, long, thin, and lean, which seems the tree, not of grief, but of boredom? They say that it looks very sad upon a grave; but it is like a German flunkey in court mourning, who does not dare to lift his arms or turn his head, for fear that he may somehow offend against etiquette.
“Is not our honest birch tree fairer, which is like a village woman weeping for her son, or a widow for her husband, who wrings her hands and lets fall over her shoulders to the ground the stream of her loose tresses? Mute with grief, how eloquently she sobs with her form! Count, if you are in love with painting, why do you not paint our own trees, among which you are sitting? Really, the neighbours will laugh at you, since, though you live in the fertile plain of Lithuania, you paint only crags and deserts.”
“Friend,” said the Count, “beautiful nature is the form, the ground, the material, but the soul is inspiration, which rises on the wings of imagination, is polished by taste, and is supported by rules. Nature is not enough, enthusiasm is not enough; the artist must fly away into the spheres of the ideal! Not everything that is beautiful can be painted! You will learn all this from books in the course of time. As for painting: for a picture one requires viewpoints, grouping, ensemble—and sky, the Italian sky! Hence in landscape art Italy was, is, and will be the country of painters. Hence also, except for Breughel—not Van der Helle, but the landscapist, for there are two Breughels[55]—and except for Ruysdael, in the whole north where has there been a landscape artist of the first rank? The sky, the sky is necessary.”
“Our painter Orlowski,”[56] interrupted Telimena, “had a Soplica's taste. (You must know that this is the malady of the Soplicas, not to like anything except their own country.) Orlowski, who spent his life in St. Petersburg, a famous painter (I have some of his sketches in my desk), dwelt close by the Emperor, in his court, as in paradise; and, Count, you cannot believe how homesick he was, he loved constantly to call to mind the days of his youth; he glorified everything in Poland, land, sky, forests.”
“And he was right,” cried Thaddeus warmly; “that Italian sky of yours, so far as I have heard of it, is blue and clear, but yet is like frozen water: are not wind and storm a hundred times more beautiful? In our land, if you merely raise your head, how many sights meet your eye! how many scenes and pictures from the very play of the clouds! For each cloud is different; for [pg 83] instance, in spring they crawl like lazy tortoises, heavy with showers, and send down from the sky to the earth long streamers like loose tresses: those are the streams of rain. The hail cloud flies swiftly on the wind like a balloon; it is round and dark-blue, with a glint of yellow in the centre; around it may be heard a mighty uproar. Even these white cloudlets of every day, just see how rapidly they change! At first they are like a flock of wild geese or swans; and from behind, the wind, like a falcon, drives them into a dense throng; they crowd together, grow and increase; new marvels! They gain curved necks, send forth manes, shoot out rows of legs, and over the vault of the skies they fly like a herd of chargers across the steppe. All are white as silver; they have fallen into confusion; suddenly masts grow from their necks, and from their manes broad sails; the herd changes into a ship, and majestically floats slowly and quietly across the blue plain of the skies!”
The Count and Telimena looked up; Thaddeus with one hand pointed out a cloud to them, while with the other he squeezed Telimena's dainty fingers. The quiet scene lasted for several minutes; the Count spread a sheet of paper on his hat and took out his pencil; then, unwelcome to their ears, the house bell resounded, and straightway the quiet wood was full of cries and uproar.
The Count, nodding his head, said in an impressive tone:—
“Thus fate is wont to end all in this world by the sound of a bell. The calculations of mighty minds, the plans of imagination, the sports of innocence, the joys of friendship, the outpourings of feeling hearts! when [pg 84] the bronze roars from afar all is confused, shattered, perturbed—and vanishes!”
Then, turning a feeling glance on Telimena, he added, “What remains?” and she said to him, “Remembrance”; and, desiring somewhat to relieve the Count's sadness, she gave him a forget-me-not that she had plucked. The Count kissed it and pinned it on his bosom. Thaddeus on the other side separated the branches of a shrub, seeing that through the greenery something white was stealing towards him. This was a little hand white as a lily; he seized it, kissed it, and silently buried his lips in it as a bee in the cup of a lily. On his lips he felt something cold; he found a key and a bit of white paper curled up in the hole of it; this was a little note. He seized it and hid it in his pocket; he did not know what the key meant, but that little white note would explain.
The bell still pealed, and, as an echo, from the depths of the quiet woods there resounded a thousand cries and shouts; this was the uproar of people searching for one another and calling, the signal that the mushroom-gathering was over for the day: the uproar was not at all gloomy or funereal, as it had seemed to the Count, but a dinner uproar.[57] Every noon this bell, calling from the gable, invited the guests and servants home to dinner; such had been the custom on many old estates, and in the Judge's house it had been preserved. So from the wood there came a throng carrying boxes, and baskets, and handkerchiefs with their ends tied up—all full of mushrooms; each young lady carried in one hand, like a folded fan, a large pine-lover; in the other tree-fungi tied together in a bunch, like field flowers, and leaf-mushrooms of various colours. The Seneschal [pg 85] had his fly-bane. With empty hands came Telimena, and after her the young gentlemen.