Here, roused a little by the wine, he began to quote in an undertone the words of Slaz in “Lilla Weneda”:—
“Am I a Lechit? What does this mean? Are boorishness,
Drunkenness, gluttony, gazing from my eyes
With the seven deadly sins, a passion for uproar,
Pickled cucumbers, and escutcheons?”
“Argue with him,” said Pan Stanislav, “especially when at the root of the matter he is partly right.”
But Marynia, who as soon as Bukatski had begun to speak of work in the country, grew somewhat thoughtful, shook thoughtfulness now from her forehead, and said,—
“When papa was not well,— and never in Kremen has he been so well as recently,—I saved him a little in management, and later that work became for me a habit. Though God knows there was no lack of troubles, it gave me a pleasure that I cannot describe. But I did not understand the cause of this till Pan Yamish explained it. ‘That,’ said he, ‘is the real work on which the world stands, and every other is either the continuation of it, or something artificial.’ Later I understood even things which he did not explain. More than once, when I went out to the fields in spring, and saw that all things were growing, I felt that my heart, too, was growing with them. And now I know why that is: In all other relations that a man holds there may be deceit, but the land is truth. It is impossible to deceive the land; it either gives, or gives not, but it does not deceive. Therefore land is loved, as truth; and because one loves it, it teaches one to love. And the dew falls not only on grain, and on meadows, but on the soul, as it were; and a man becomes better, for he has to deal with truth, and he loves,—that is, he is nearer God. Therefore I loved my Kremen so much.”
Here Marynia became frightened at her own speech, and at this, what would “Stas” think; at the same time reminiscences had roused her. All this was reflected in her eyes as the dawn, and on her young face; and she was herself like the dawn.
Bukatski looked at her as he would at some unknown newly discovered master-piece of the Venetian school; then he closed his eyes, and hid half of his small face in his enormous fantastic cravat, and whispered,—