“Yes, that and many other things. I urge him and Pan Stanislav always to read the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi. They are not willing to do so, and laugh at me. Yet he was the greatest man and the greatest saint of the Middle Ages,—a saint who renewed the world. If such a man were to come now, a renewal in Christ would follow, still more sincerely and with greater completeness.”
Midday approached, and with it heat. The forest began to have the odor of resin; the lake became perfectly smooth in the calm air full of glitter, and, while reflecting the spotless blue of the sky, seemed to slumber.
At last they reached the house and the garden, in which them was a restaurant, and sat under a beech-tree at a table already laid. Pan Stanislav called a waiter in a soiled coat, ordered dinner, then looked about silently at the lake and the mountains around it. A couple of yards from the table grew a whole bunch of iris, moistened by a fountain fixed among stones. Pani Emilia, looking at the flowers, said,—
“When I am at a lake and see irises, I think that I am in Italy.”
“For nowhere else are there so many lakes or so many irises,” answered Pan Stanislav.
“Or so much delight for every man,” added Vaskovski. “For many years I go there in the autumn to find a refuge for the last days. I hesitated long between Perugia and Assisi, but last year Rome gained the day. Rome seems the anteroom to another life, in which anteroom light from the next world is visible already. I will go there in October.”
“I envy you sincerely,” said Pani Emilia.
“Litka is twelve years old,” began Vaskovski.
“And three months,” interrupted Litka.
“And three months: therefore for her age she is very small and a great little giddy-head; it is time to show her various things in Rome,” continued Vaskovski. “Nothing is so remembered as that which is seen in childhood. And though childhood does not feel many things completely, nor understand them, that comes later, and comes very agreeably, for it is as if some one were to illuminate on a sudden impressions sunk in shadow. Come with me to Italy in October.”