"God be praised that it's so! but if it hadn't been a son——"
Maciej did not finish his sentence, however, for the offended shoemaker began to reprimand him sternly.
"You are talking nonsense, Maciej, and it is not for the first time! Does not the Church also give the name of St. Stanisława? Besides, though I am a sinner as every man is, couldn't I guess that a word spoken at a moment like that would carry weight with the Almighty? Isn't everything in God's hand?"
Maciej looked down, and a deep sigh was the only testimony to the shoemaker's eloquence.
Stanisław's explanation of the circumstances lightened our task very much, and when he had remembered that the mother never complained of her son—on the contrary, was always satisfied with him—we succeeded in calming his excessive anxiety concerning the fate of his only child. In order to settle the matter thoroughly, it was decided to ask some responsible and enlightened person to examine the lad as he should think fit and to keep an eye on him in future, reporting the result of the examination to the father. This was arranged because the mother, being a simple and uneducated woman, was thought to be possibly much too fond of her only son, and an over-indulgent and blind judge. The only question was the choice of the individual—a sufficiently difficult matter; this one had died, that one had grown rich, the other had lately taken to drink. We meditated long, and would have meditated still longer, if finally the shoemaker had not said firmly, with the air of a man persuaded that he is speaking to the point:
"We will write to the priest!" And when Maciej, glad that the troublesome deliberation was over—possibly, also, in order to regain his position after having just said a stupid thing—hastily supported this with, "Yes, the priest will be best," I conceded to the majority.
Certain difficulties arose from the fact that the priest was not personally known to Światełki, and that, as Maciej put it, "the priest couldn't be approached just anyhow." These difficulties were overcome by the business-like shoemaker, who began by ordering a solemn Requiem Mass for the souls of his parents, for which he sent the priest ten roubles, and in this way commended his son to the kind consideration of his benefactor.
I began to write the letters, of which there were to be three: to his wife, to his son, and to the priest. In the course of my stay in Siberia I had written so many similar letters that I had gained no little facility in this kind of composition. I therefore wrote quickly, only asking for a few particulars. The shoemaker crept from the bed, on which he had hitherto been sitting, to the chair standing by the table, and bending over this followed the movement of my pen attentively, ready to answer any questions. Maciej cleaned out his pipe in silence. I finished the letters, and proceeded to read them.
Stanisław sent his wife fifty roubles. As he retained a most affectionate remembrance of his faithful Basia, loved her possibly more now than twenty years ago, and could never speak of her without deep emotion, the letter to her corresponded to the feelings of his youth. He was paler than usual as he listened to it, and he tried to say something, but his lips trembled and the words caught in his throat. When the reading was finished, however, Stanisław wriggled in the way peculiar to him, and, after blowing his nose several times, finally articulated: "Now I will sign." Having discovered his spectacles in the table drawer and duly fixed them on his nose, the shoemaker pointed to the place where the signature was to be put, and began:
"Es, tee." He had already opened his mouth to pronounce the third letter, when the incautious Maciej, who had behaved most properly while I was writing, unexpectedly interrupted with: