“What troubles Pan Stas?”
“Nothing, little child; I am looking around at the lake, and that is why I do not talk.”
“I was pleasing myself yesterday, thinking to show Pan Stas Thumsee.”
“Though there are no rocks here, it is very beautiful But what house is that on the other side?”
“We will take dinner there.”
Pani Emilia was talking merrily with Vaskovski, who, carrying his hat in his hand, and seeking in his pockets for a handkerchief to wipe his bald head, gave his opinions about Bukatski,—
“He is an Aryan,” concluded he; “and therefore in continual unrest, he is seeking peace. He is buying pictures and engravings at present, thinking that thus he will fill a void. But what do I see? This, those children of the century bear in their souls an abyss like this lake, for example; besides, the abyss in them is bottomless, and they think to fill it with pictures, strong waters, amateurship, dilettantism, Baudelaire, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, finally dilettante science. Poor birds, they are beating their heads against the sides of their cages! It is just I tried to fill this lake by throwing in a pebble.”
“And what can fill life?”
“Every sincere idea, all great feelings, but only on condition that they begin in Christ. Had Bukatski loved art in the Christian way, it would have given him the peace which he is forced to seek.”
“Have you told him that?”