Pan Stanislav remembered how Vaskovski, at news of Litka’s last attack, said that the life of the child could not be purposeless, and that if she had to die she was predestined to do something before death; and now he wished to attack Vaskovski on this point, when the thought flashed on him that, before her death, Litka had united him with Marynia; and it occurred to him that perhaps she had lived for this very purpose. But at that moment he rebelled against the thought. Anger at Marynia seized him; he was full of stubbornness, and almost contempt.
“I do not want Marynia at such a price!” thought he, gritting his teeth; “I do not! I have suffered enough through her. I would give ten such for one Litka.”
Meanwhile Vaskovski, trotting near him, said,—
“Nothing is to be seen at a step’s distance, and the stones are slippery from fog. Without thee I should have fallen long ago.”
Pan Stanislav recovered himself, and answered,—
“Whoso walks on the earth, professor, must look down, not up.”
“Thou hast good legs, my dear friend.”
“And eyes which see clearly, even in a fog like this which surrounds us. And it is needful, for we all live in a fog, and deuce knows what is beyond it. All that thou sayest makes on me such an impression as the words of a man who would break dry twigs, throw them into a torrent, and say, Flowers will come from these. Rottenness will come, nothing more. From me, too, this torrent has torn away something from which I am to think that a flower will rise? Folly! But here is thy gate. Good-night!”
And they separated. Pan Stanislav returned to his own house barely alive, he was so weary; and, when he had lain down in bed, he began to torture himself with thoughts further continued, or rather with visions. To begin with, before his eyes appeared the figure of Pani Emilia, powerless from pain; she was sitting in Marynia’s parlor, under the palm-leaf, which was hanging over her head like an immense ill-omened hand, with outspread, grasping fingers, and it cast a shadow on her face. “I might philosophize over that till morning,” muttered he. “Everything out of which life is constructed is a hand like that, from which a shadow falls,—nothing more. But if there were a little mercy besides, the child would not have died; but with what Vaskovski says, you couldn’t keep life in a sparrow.”
Here he remembered, however, that Vaskovski not only spoke of death, but begged him also to say “eternal rest” for Litka. Pan Stanislav began now to struggle with himself. His lips were closed through lack of a deep faith that Litka might hear his “eternal rest,” and that it might be of good to her. He felt, besides, a kind of shame to speak words which did not flow from the depth of his conviction, and felt also the same kind of shame not to say the “eternal rest.” “For, finally, what do I know?” thought he. “Nothing. Around is fog and fog. Likely nothing will come to her from that; but, let happen what may, that is in truth the only thing that I can do now for my kitten,—for that dear child,—who was mindful of me on the night that she died.”