"I received him," he said, "not to save an ass, but because I am bored and it just suited me. Some wise Italian once said that the divinity which holds everything in this world in restraint is called la paura,--fear; and the Italian was right. If the people did not fear, nothing would remain--not a single social form of life! On this ladder of fear there are numerous rounds and the highest is the fear of death. Death! That is a real divinity! Reges rego, leges lego, judice judico! And I confess that I, whose life has been passed in toppling from pedestals various divinities, had the most difficulty in overcoming this divinity. But I overcame it and so completely that I made it my dog."
"What did you do?"
"A dog, which as often as it pleases me, I stroke over the hair, as for instance now, when I received that revolutionary booby. But that is yet nothing! See under what terror people live: the executioner's axe, the gallows, the bullet, cancer, consumption, typhoid fever, tabes--suffering, pain, whole months and years of torture--and why? Before the fear of death. And I jeer at that. Me, hangman will not execute, cancer will not gnaw, consumption will not consume, pain will not break, torture will not debase, for I shout, in a given moment, at this divinity before which all tremble, as at a spaniel: 'Lie down!'"
After which he laughed and said:
"And that mad booby of mine, however, hid himself as if before death. Tell me what would happen if people actually did not fear?"
"They would not be themselves," answered Gronski. "They desire life, not death."
XI
Swidwicki did not lie when he said that he did not know the name of the revolutionist to whom he promised an asylum, for in reality Pauly had made a secret of it. She so arranged it with Laskowicz on the way. The young student, learning that Swidwicki, to whom the girl was conducting him, was an acquaintance of Gronski and Pani Otocka, in the first moments became frightened inordinately. He recollected the letters which he had written to Panna Marynia, and his odious relations with Krzycki upon whom his party a short time previously perpetrated an attack. Personally he did not participate in it and the suggestion did not emanate from him, but on the other hand he did not have the slightest doubt that the committee issued the death sentence as a result of his reports designating Krzycki as the chief obstacle to their propaganda, and he remembered that he did nothing to prevent the attempt, and was even pleased in his soul that a man, hateful to him and at the same time a putative rival, would be removed from his path.
For a time he even felt, owing to this "washing of hands," a certain internal disgust; at the intelligence, however, that the attack was unsuccessful he experienced, as it were, a feeling of disappointment. And now he was going to seek shelter with a man who was a relative of Pani Otocka and who might have heard of the letters to Marynia and his relations with Krzycki. This was a turn of affairs, clearly fatal, which might frustrate the best intentions of Panna Pauly.
Considering all this he began to beg the girl not to mention his name, giving as a reason that in case the police should find him, Swidwicki would be less culpable.