“They are well, and are coming here after dinner,” answered Pan Stanislav.
Just before dinner Professor Vaskovski came, bringing Bukatski, who had returned to Warsaw the evening before. His intimacy with the Bigiels permitted him to come without being invited; and the presence of Pani Emilia was too great a temptation to be resisted. He met her, however, without a trace of sentiment, in his usual jesting fashion; she was glad to see him, for he amused her with his strange and original way of uttering ideas.
“Were you not going to Monachium and Italy?” asked she, when they had sat down to dinner.
“Yes; but I forgot a card-knife in Warsaw, and came back to get it.”
“Oh, that was a weighty reason.”
“It always makes me impatient that people do everything from weighty reasons. What privilege have weighty reasons, that every man must accommodate himself to them? Besides, I gave, without wishing it, the last services to a friend, for yesterday I was at the funeral of Lisovich.”
“What! that thin little sportsman?” inquired Bigiel.
“The same. And imagine that to this moment I cannot escape astonishment that a man who played the jester all his life could bring himself to such a serious thing as death. Simply I cannot recognize my Lisovich. At every step a man meets disappointment.”
“But,” said Pan Stanislav, “Pani Kraslavski told me that Ploshovski, he with whom all the women of Warsaw were in love, shot himself in Rome.”
“He was a relative of mine,” said Plavitski.