And that is the artist, I thought,--that the Roman,
the Greek! You come here to look at the Gladiator, not so much for the
sake of the form, as because he reminds you of Michna from Koslowka.
I begin to understand now the taciturnity and melancholy. Lukomski
evidently guessed my thoughts; for, the mystic eyes looking straight
before him, he began in a broken voice to reply to my unuttered words:
"Rome is well enough,--to live in, but not to die in! I am getting on
fairly well,--no right to complain. I remain here because I must; but
the longing for the old place tears me like all the devils. When the
dogs bark at night in the garden, I fancy the sound comes from the
village; and I feel as if I could scratch the walls. I should go mad
if I did not go there once a year. I am going now, shortly, because I
cannot breathe here any longer."
He put his hand to his throat, and screwed up his mouth as if
to whistle, to hide the trembling of the lips. It was almost an
explosion,--the more astounding, as it was so unexpected. A sudden
emotion seized me at the thought of the vast difference between me and
such men as he and Sniatynski. Even now I think of it with a certain
apprehension. There are vast horizons out of my reach. What an
intensity of feeling there is in those men! They may be happy or
wretched with it; but how immeasurably richer they are than I!
There is no danger of life becoming to them a desert and a barren
wilderness.
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