“Ah, then you understand.... I was afraid you had been surprised at my friendship for Obojanski, seeing the way I am accustomed to talk. But, you know, if scientific work were properly remunerated, Obojanski’s monographs would bring him in enough money to live as sumptuously as he is doing now. So he arrives at the very same result, though by different roads. Yet that, unfortunately, is paltering with principles.”
Oh, I should not object, so far as I am concerned, to any such “paltering!” As things stand, I am working too much: I might work less and do something better.... All my talent is quite thrown away on those everlasting accounts.
My dream is now, how to make more money. And this renders me somewhat uneasy; perhaps it is on account of pecuniary circumstances that I am now considering the possibility of marriage with Janusz, in case Roslawski....
This I should not like. Not because it would show my character in an ignoble light. That’s nonsense. No, but it would mark how little I care for the creature I could take on such terms.
I am of those whose sin is greater than the sin of Eve and Adam: I have eaten of the fruit of the knowledge that there is neither good nor evil.
Yes, for I have gone on—on to the very end. Every one has something he can call his own. Sufferers magnify in their mind the power of suffering; those who have abandoned everything make a god of their strength of will to do so. But I have nothing left, nothing absolutely. Of beauty I have not enough to love that beauty in myself. Wisdom is wisdom from one standpoint only: that lost, its very idea ceases to exist. I have too much mind to be artful and mysterious, so I strike no one as being uncommon. I have all the shortcomings of a perfect sage; for I believe in nothing, and am indifferent to all things. But I am not, as sages are, encyclopædic, nor do I love knowledge, nor have I any. At the same time, I do not, like a typical Decadent, hug myself at the thought of my doubts and of my indifference. Quite the contrary—to others, nay, even to myself, I play the part of one that is blithe, well-favoured, happy, and quite satisfied with being what I am. This is not because I deliberately try to keep my secret to myself, but because merriment is to my mind less wearisome than the apathy of doubt. And I have not as my own even what I say here, for I am not sure that it is true....
Roslawski...? Well, say I am attracted by the interest of an experiment.
Out of which I am making a grave and important affair, simply because of my love for some pathos in life....
Why, Janusz himself can be “distinguished” on certain occasions.
Madame, (he writes),