"Dear Lady,—I was able to endure the loss of your hand, but not of your respect. Read and judge. A dying friend left to my care a woman whom he loved with all the power of a suffering heart. I had deprived him of the love of this woman without wishing to do so. After his death I became acquainted with her more intimately, and it seemed to me that I loved her. Unfortunately I told her so. After that you know, beloved lady, what happened. After that I hid from myself my ill-fated attachment to you. How much I suffered! Oh, pardon me! I am a man, I too must love, but still it was not from my lips that you learned of that love. When at last I stood before my own conscience, when the moment of memory came, judge yourself, how was I to act, whither was I to go, what was I to do? The oath to a dying man, the word given to a woman unhappy beyond expression, everything except my heart commanded me to abdicate you. It was not through my fault that you learned of this only yesterday. This news should have gone to you at the time when Count Pelski appeared. Misfortune, and the frivolity of a man ordained otherwise. This is the state of affairs! Judge, and, if you are able, forgive. Adam says that I am ill. This is true: my thoughts are weeping, I feel a burning in my blood, and out of pain and chaos I see one thing clearly,—that I love! that I love thee, O angel!"
After the reading of this letter the remnants of anger and pride vanished from Lula's forehead, on her beautiful face a mild though deep melancholy fixed itself.
"Pan Adam," said she, "tell the gentleman that he has acted as he should."
"And forgive me, dear lady," said Augustinovich, throwing himself on his knees. "I was unjust. I did you a wrong, but I had no idea, I knew not, that there were such women in the world as you are."
CHAPTER XXI
Augustinovich went directly from Pani Visberg's to the hospital, where he remained all night. Yosef was ill, very ill. Typhus rushed at that strong organism, threatening it with utter destruction. About midnight the sick man began to rave; he talked with himself, and argued obstinately on the immortality of the soul with a black cat which he saw sitting on the bed. It appeared that he feared death, for a number of times indescribable terror was depicted on his face. He feared and trembled very acutely after every movement of Augustinovich. At moments he sang with a quivering voice, and as it were through sleep various gladsome and melancholy songs, or conversed with acquaintances. There was even a kind of astonishing humor in the naturalness of tones in these conversations.
Augustinovich, unmanned already by the events of preceding days, was irritated unspeakably. He waited for morning with longing, looking often at the window-panes, which, as if through spite, continued to be as black as ever. Outside there was deep darkness, and fine rain began to cut the window-panes, filling the hospital chamber with a sound which was monotonous and disagreeable.
For a long time such sad and disquieting thoughts had not wandered into Augustinovich's head as at that moment. Resting his elbows on his knees and covering his face with his hands, he meditated over the marvellous and painful complication of events during the last few days. Sometimes he raised his head and cast a quick glance at the sick man; at times it seemed to him that the gloom of death was falling on the withered, sharp features of Yosef.
Augustinovich pondered over this, how a man, so active and broadly living a short time before, would be in a couple of days, perhaps, something dead, which they would bury in the ground, and the comedy would be ended! Oh, an ordinary, everyday thought, and every day equally bitter for those who must think: This is the end! dust! Still, when he lived with full life, he judged, analyzed, acted perhaps more widely than others. As a plough turns out the sod, so he, in the soil of life, from the furrows of good and evil was winning good and—? Involuntarily one asks for the moral sense of this fable. Where, when, on what planets, will living persons find an answer beyond the tomb? Immortality?—In the ocean of human acts perhaps a few moral atoms of the deeds of the dead survive, but that I, powerful, energetically self-conscious, where is it? And those atoms of acts are like the corpse of a sailor dropped down from a ship into the abyss of the sea. Where shall we look for them, and who will find them? Will God ever fish them out from those shoreless billows, and will He develop from them a new self-conscious being? "È bene trovato!" The bitterness of these thoughts settled now on the sleepy forehead of Augustinovich, but meanwhile the window-panes from black began to turn gray. It was dawning. In the chamber the light of the candle grew rosier gradually and fainter, objects began to issue from the shade. In the corridors were heard now the steps of the hospital servants. An hour later the doctor came in.
"How is the patient?" inquired he.