I found the whole company gathered round the breakfast table, and one glance was sufficient to tell me that something unusual had taken place. Aniela looked frightened, Pani Celina troubled, and my aunt was flushed with anger. Only Kromitzki was quietly reading the paper, but he looked cross, and his face was as yellow as if he had been ill.
"Do you know," said my aunt, pointing at Aniela, "what news she has brought me as a morning's greeting?"
"No, what is it?" I said, sitting down at the table.
"Nothing more nor less than that in two weeks, Celina's health permitting, they are both going to Odessa or somewhere farther still."
If a thunderbolt had fallen in the middle of the table, I could not have been more startled. My heart sank within me. I looked at Aniela, who had grown very red, as if caught in the act of committing a wrong deed, and at last asked, "Where are they going? why?"
"They give me a deal of trouble at Ploszow, you know," said my aunt, imitating Aniela's voice. "They do not want to be a burden to me, the charitable souls. They evidently think I yearn after solitude; and in case you went away too, it would be ever so much better, more cheerful for me, to be by myself in that big house. They have discussed this all the night, instead of sleeping like other respectable people."
My aunt waxed angrier still, and turning upon Kromitzki asked: "Did you preside at that debate?"
"Not at all," he replied; "I was never even consulted. But if my wife has resolved to go, I suppose it is in order to be nearer me, for which I ought to feel grateful."
"There is nothing settled yet," remarked Aniela.
I, forgetting all precautions, looked steadily at her, but she did not lift her eyes; which convinced me all the more that I was the cause of this sudden resolve. I cannot find words to express what I felt at that moment, and what deadly bitterness suffused my heart. Aniela knows perfectly that I live for her only, exist through her; that all my thoughts belong to her, my actions have only her in view; that she is to me an issue of life and death; and in spite of all that she calmly decides to go away. Whether I should perish or beat my head against the wall, she never so much as considered. She will be more at ease when she ceases to see me writhing like a beetle stuck on a pin; she will be no longer afraid of my kissing her feet furtively, or startling that virtuous conscience. How can she hesitate when such excellent peace can be got, at so small a price as cutting somebody's throat! Thoughts like these spun across my brain by thousands. I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. "You are virtuous," I said inwardly to Aniela, "because you have no heart. If a dog attached himself to you as I am attached, something would be due to him. You have never shown me any indulgence, or any spark of pity; you have never confessed to me any tender feeling, and you have taken from me what you could. If you were able, you would deprive me of your presence altogether,—although you had the certainty that if I could not see you my eyes would perish forever. But I begin to understand you now, begin to see that your inflexibility is so great because your heart is so small. You are cold and unfeeling, and your virtue is nothing but an enormous egoism, that wants above everything to be left undisturbed, and for that peace is capable of sacrificing all else."