"Thank you! Thank you!"
In fact an opportunity was easily found, as Pani Otocka also had some news which she desired to impart to Gronski, and with this object she sent her maid to him with an invitation to meet her on the yoked elm walk, near the pond. When they met there she gave him, just as Ladislaus had done a while before, a letter which arrived in the same morning's mail and said:
"Please read it and advise me what to do with it."
It was a letter from Laskowicz to Marynia and its tenor was as follows:
"A great idea is like a gigantic bird: her wings cast a shadow over the earth, while she hovers in the sun.
"Whoever does not fly upwards with her is surrounded by darkness.
"And darkness is death.
"In that darkness, I behold Thee, like an alabaster statuette. This night the sounds of thy music reach me.
"And lo, in my lonely chamber I think of Thee and grieve for Thee.
"For Thou couldst be a beam-feather in the wings of this gigantic bird idea and inhale the pure air of the dizzy heights and play in glory to the legions of the living; and Thou breathest the air of tombs and playest to a life which is moribund and to souls that wither; and not to people but to ghosts.