But I really think it is a costly pearl I shall find at the
bottom of the deep.
CASA OSORIA, 6 March.
Yesterday I arrived at Rome. My father is not quite so bad as I
had feared. His left arm and the left side of his body are almost
paralyzed, but the doctor tells me his heart is not threatened, and
that he may live for years.
7 March.
I left Aniela in doubt, expectation, and suspense. But I could not do
otherwise. The day following the Sniatynskis' visit, the very day I
was going to ask Aniela to be my wife, I received a letter from my
father telling me about his illness.
"Make haste, dear boy," he wrote, "for I should like to see you before
I die, and I feel my bark very close to the shore."
After the receipt of such a letter I took the first train, and never
stopped until I reached Rome. When leaving Ploszow I had very little
hope to find my father alive. In vain my aunt tried to comfort me,
saying if things were so bad he would surely have sent a telegram
instead of a letter.
I know my father's little oddities, among which is a rooted dislike to
telegrams. But my aunt's composure was only put on, at the bottom she
felt as frightened as myself.
In the hurry, the sudden shock, and under the horror of my father's
likely death, I could not speak of love and marriage. It seemed
against nature, almost a brutal thing, to whisper words of love, not
knowing whether at the same time my father might not be breathing his
last.
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