In the conversation of this splendid couple there was nothing which had not been heard a hundred times before. They flitted from book to book, as butterflies flit from one flower to another. But such a conversation does not seem empty and commonplace when one is speaking with a dear little soul; when the conversation is simply the canvas on which that soul fastens the golden flowers of its own thoughts and feelings, and when, from time to time, its interior is disclosed, like the opening interior of a white rose. And, besides, such a conversation flies up in every case, like a bird in the air, to cerulean spheres, attaches itself to the world of mind, and rises like a climbing plant on a pole. There in the village inn, rude people were drinking and talking in peasant words of peasant things; but that couple were sailing in another region, and on a ship which had, as Gounod's song says,—
"Masts of ivory
With a banner of satin,
A rudder of pure ruddy gold."
Moreover, it is proper to add that Panna Yadviga had, for purposes of self-training, turned the head of her cousin. In these conditions poetry is more frequently mentioned.
"Have you read the last edition of Eli?" asked the cavalier.
"You know, Pan Victor, that I am dying about Eli. When I read him, it seems to me that I hear music; and involuntarily I apply to myself that verse of Uyeiski,—
"'I lie on a cloud,
Melted in calm,
With a dreamy tear in my eye: