"Let us return," answered Marynia.
On the way she said with delighted countenance:
"You and Zosia, thought that I saw nothing, and I--oho!"
In the salon they chanced upon a political discussion. The tall elderly gentleman with the white mane, who was a colleague and friend of the late Otocki and at the same time editor of one of the principal dailies in Warsaw, said:
"They think that this is a new state of affairs, which henceforth is bound to continue, but it is an attack of hysteria, after which exhaustion and prostration will follow. I have lived long in the world and often have witnessed similar phenomena. Yes, it is so. It is a stupid and wicked revolution."
If Swidwicki had heard from some madman that this was a wise and salutary revolution, he undoubtedly would have been of the opinion of the old editor, but, as he esteemed lightly journalists in general, he was particularly angered at the thought that the amiable old gentleman passed in certain circles as a political authority; so he began at once to dispute.
"Only the bottomless naïvete of the conservatives," he said, "is capable of demanding from a revolution reason and goodness. It is the same as demanding, for instance, of a conflagration that it should be gentle and sensible. Every revolution is the child of the passions--unreason and rage--and not of love. Its aim is to blow up the old forms of folly and evil and forcibly introduce into life the new."
"And how do you picture to yourself the new?"
"In reality as also foolish and wicked--but new. Upon such transitions our history is based, and even the annals of mankind in general."
"That is the philosophy of despair."