Gronski glanced at the young nobleman and afterwards at the servant, as if he wanted to say: "Why is this witness here?" Ladislaus understood and said:
"He is very deaf, so we can speak quite freely. He wheezes because he has the asthma."
Afterwards he continued:
"Mother for the past two years has been bent upon my getting married, so she bustles about, writes voluminous letters, and sends me every winter to Warsaw, and I am certain that last summer she was in Krynica not so much for her own health, which, God be praised, she preserves so well, but to look over the young ladies and make a selection. And there these cousins of mine have so bewitched her that she returned, as I surmise, with a prepared project."
"I must give you warning," interrupted Gronski, "that so far as Panna Marynia is concerned you are building an edifice upon ice, as in the first place she is but sixteen; and again she will, at the end of autumn, return to the conservatory in Brussels; and thirdly her whole soul is wrapped up in her violin and in all probability will always remain there."
"May it stay there. You say 'you are building,' but I not only am not building, but would prefer that Mother would not build, as it will be unpleasant for her. After all, my dear mother is the most upright soul in the world, and beyond doubt all she desires is that I should have a good and estimable woman for a wife; but I would prefer that my future spouse should not resemble too much a Grecian statue."
"Well then?"
"Well then, Panna Marynia is not involved but only an ideal and, at the same time, a warm young widow: to which arrangement I cannot by any means assent."
"I will answer with a Lithuanian anecdote, according to which an old woman, to a peasant's assertion that he did not fear the master, replied, 'Because thou hast never seen him.' Likewise, you have never seen Pani Otocka, or have forgotten how she looks."
But Ladislaus repeated: