Ladislaus began to wring his hands and said:
"Perhaps through Zosia we could ascertain whether this is forever."
"You understand that she may not have wished to discuss the cause of your rupture even with Pani Zosia."
"I understand, I understand."
"But you now have a fever," said Gronski, "your hands are burning. Go, try to cool off and calm yourself."
XII
Laskowicz now beheld Marynia, indeed from a distance, but daily. Even on rainy days, when she did not walk to the rehearsals, but rode, he lay in wait on the stairway of the edifice, in order to see her alight from the carriage. On fair days he usually waited near her home, and afterwards followed after her to the hall. As among the employees in the building were found a few "associates," these facilitated his admittance to the rehearsals. To hide in the boxes or in the seats at the end of the rows was easy, as during the rehearsals only the stage was fully lit up and in the auditorium itself the dusk was illumined by only a few lamps, which were lit in order that the handful of privileged lovers of music, who occupied the seats behind the orchestra, might not be plunged in complete darkness. Amidst these privileged ones, Laskowicz often recognized acquaintances,--Gronski, Pani Otocka, the old notary. Miss Anney, sometimes Krzycki, and two or three times, Dr. Szremski. But notwithstanding his hatred of Ladislaus and dislike of the doctor and Gronski, he was little occupied by them and thought of them very little, as his eyes could not even for a moment be torn from Marynia. He encompassed with his gaze her girlish form, standing out on the edge of the stage, bathed in a lustre of electricity, luminous of her own accord, and involuntarily she reminded him of that alabaster statuette, which the venerable canon deemed his greatest treasure. Laskowicz was not an educated man. His one-sided study of physics had contracted his intellectual horizon and he was incapable of rendering to himself a clear account of certain impressions. Nevertheless, when he gazed on that maid, with violin in hand, on her pure calm countenance, on the elongated outlines of her figure and dress, there awakened in him a half conscious feeling that in her there was something of poetry, and something of the church. She seemed to him an artless supernal vision, to which one might pray.
Accordingly he deified her in his wild, fanatical soul. But there raged within him a revolt against all divinities, therefore he fought with his own feelings and struggled to depress and weed them out to the last extremity. Intentionally he plucked off the wings of his own thoughts: intentionally he imposed fetters upon his vagaries and unchained his concupiscence. He discomfited himself, tortured himself, and suffered.
Often he stood on the brink of madness--and in such cases he was ready to annihilate, slaughter, and set fire to the whole city in order to seize, amidst the bloodshed and conflagration, this silvery maid and possess her,--and afterward perish with her and all others. He imagined that during the revolutionary storm, which the waves of the proletariat would stir up, such an universal hour of annihilation might strike. But when reality scattered these dreams, when moments occurred in which it became plain that the people themselves put a muzzle upon the jaws of the revolutionary dragon, then the gory vision evaporated into vacuous smoke, and only exhaustion and confusion remained, for this gloomy proletaire felt that as long as he had strength the storm would rage, and that when it passed away he would sink into complete nothingness.
Hence, in his heart bitterness and jealousy accumulated more and more. He loved Marynia and at the same time he hated her, for he thought that she looked upon him as a worm which squirms at her feet, unworthy of a glance. He was confirmed in this conviction by the fact that his letters evidently did not make the slightest impression upon her and did not disturb her usual tranquillity. Laskowicz had given his word to Pauly that he would see Marynia only from a distance, and he could not approach her, because she was never out alone. But in reality he could not conjecture that those letters were received and burnt by Pani Otocka and that Marynia knew nothing about them. It appeared to him that his passionate appeals in which the words, "Beloved! beloved!" were repeated every little while, and those fiery outbursts in which he prostrated himself in humility at her adored feet must have represented him to her as the ruling king-soul shoving the human wave into the unknown future, and ought to have evoked some result. "Let it be anger, let it be hatred," he said to himself in his soul, "but here there is nothing! She passes by me as if I was a street cur; she does not see me; she does not deign to recognize me."