"
He charged me with the chairback as with a battering ram. I retreated
before him until we had come close to the window; there he jumped up.
"How blind you are! In presence of such social drought, such utter
absence of general happiness as stamps our time, not to grasp this
felicity that is within reach! Shiver on the forum, and not light a
fire at home! Idiotism can go no farther! I tell you plainly, go and
get married."
He pointed through the window at Aniela, who with his wife was coming
back from the hot-houses, and added: "There is your happiness. There
it patters in fur boots on the frozen snow. Take her by weight of
gold, by weight in carats rather! You simply have no home, not only in
a physical sense, but in a moral, intellectual meaning; you have no
basis, no point of rest, and she will give you all that. But do not
philosophize her away as you have philosophized away your abilities
and your thirty-five years of life!"
He could not have told me anything better, nobler, or what chimed in
more with my own desires. I pressed his hands and replied:--
"No, I will not philosophize her away, because I love her."
Upon this the ladies entered, and Pani Sniatynska observed:--
"We heard some disputes when we were leaving, but I see peace is
restored. May I ask what you have been discussing?"
"Woman, madame," I said.
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