Hania

His heart began to beat somewhat nervously, and these questions flew through his head, —

"When could the servant have brought in this sister of charity; and how did she enter?"

Next he thought that perhaps something seemed to him thus because he was weak, then he closed his eyes. But after a while he opened them again.

The sister of charity was sitting on the same spot, motionless as if sunk in prayer.

A wonderful feeling composed of fear and delight began to raise the hair on the head of the sick man. Something attracted his eyes with incomprehensible power to that figure. It seemed to him that he had seen it somewhere, but where and when he could not remember. An irresistible desire to see her face seized him, but the white head-dress concealed it. Kamionka, without knowing why, did not dare to speak or to move, or hardly to breathe. He felt only that the sensation of fear and delight was possessing him more and more powerfully, and he asked with astonishment, "What is this?"

Meanwhile there was perfect day. And what a marvellous morning that must be outside! Suddenly without any transition there came into the studio a light as powerful, bright, and joyous as if it were springtime and May.

Waves of golden glitter, rising like a flood, began to fill the room, to overflow it so mightily that the marbles were drowned and dissolved in that brightness; the walls were covered with it and then disappeared altogether. Kamionka found himself as it were in some bright space without boundary.

Then he noticed that the covering on the head of the sister began to lose its white stiffness, that it trembled at the edges, melted, dissolved like clear mist, and changed into light.

The sister turned her face slowly toward the sick man, and then the deserted sufferer saw in the bright aureole the well-known hundred times beloved features of his dead wife.

He sprang from the bed, and from his breast came a cry, in which all his years of sorrow, tears, suffering, and despair were united, —

"Zosia! Zosia!"

And seizing her, he drew her to him; she threw her arms around his neck.

More and more light came into the room.

"Thou didst not forget me," said she at last, "hence I have come. I obtained an easy death for thee."

Kamionka held her in his arms all the time, as if in fear that the blessed vision would vanish from him together with the light.

"I am ready to die," answered he, "if thou wilt stay with me."

She smiled at him with her angelic smile, and taking one arm from his neck she pointed downward, and said, —

"Thou art dead already. Look!"

He looked in the direction of her hand, and behold, under their feet, he saw through the window in the ceiling of his own gloomy and lonely studio, and there on the bed lay his own corpse, with widely opened mouth, which in the yellow face seemed a dark hole as it were.

And he looked on that emaciated body as something foreign. But after a while all began to vanish from his eyes, for that surrounding brightness, as if urged by a wind from beyond this world, went off somewhere into infinity.

ON THE BRIGHT SHORE

CHAPTER I

THE artist was sitting beside Pani Elzen in an open carriage; on the front seat were her sons the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. He was partly conversing with the lady, partly thinking of a question which required prompt decision, and partly looking at the sea. There was something to look at. They were driving from Nice toward Monte Carlo by the so-called Old Cornice; that is, by a road along impending cliffs, high above the water. On the left, the view was hidden by naked towering rocks, which were gray, with a rosy pearl tinge; on the right was the blue Mediterranean, which appeared to lie immensely low down, thus producing the effect of an abyss and of boundlessness. From the height on which they were moving, the small fishing boats seemed like white spots, so that frequently it was difficult to distinguish a distant sail from a seamew circling above the water.

Pani Elzen had placed her hand on Svirski's arm; her face was that of a woman delighted and forgetful of what she is doing; she gazed with dreamy eyes over the mirror of the sea.

Svirski felt the touch; a quiver of delight ran through him, and he thought that if at that moment Romulus and Remus had not been in front of them, he might have placed his arm around the young woman, perhaps, and pressed her to his bosom.

But straightway a certain fear seized him at the thought that hesitation would then have an end, and the question be settled.

"Stop the carriage, please," said Pani Elzen.

Svirski stopped the carriage, and they were silent a moment.

"How quiet it is here after the bustle of Monte Carlo!" said the young widow.

"I hear only music," answered the artist; "perhaps the bands are playing on the iron-clads in Villa Franca."

In fact, from below came at intervals muffled sounds of music, borne thither by the same breeze which brought the odor of orange-blossoms and heliotropes. Beneath them were visible the roofs of villas, dotting the shore, and almost hidden in groves of eucalyptus, while round about were large white spots formed by blossoming almond-trees, and rosy spots made by peach blossoms. Lower down was the dark-blue sunlit bay of Villa Franca, with crowds of great ships.

The life seething there presented a marvellous contrast to the deep deadness of the naked, barren mountains, above which extended the sky, cloudless and so transparent that it was monotonous and glassy. Everything was dimmed and belittled amid that calm greatness; the carriage with its occupants seemed, as it were, a kind of beetle, clinging to the cliffs along which it was climbing to the summit with insolence.

"Here life ends altogether," said Svirski, looking at the naked cliffs.

Pani Elzen leaned more heavily on his shoulder and answered with a drowsy, drawling voice, —

"But it seems to me that here life begins."

After a moment Svirski answered with a certain emotion, "Perhaps you are right."

And he looked with an inquiring glance at her. Pani Elzen raised her eyes to him in answer, but dropped them quickly, as if confused, and, though her two sons were sitting on the front seat of the carriage, she looked at that moment like a maiden whose eyes could not endure the first ray of love. After that, both were silent; while from below came snatches of music.

Meanwhile, far away at sea, at the very entrance to the bay, appeared a dark pillar of smoke, and the quiet of the company was broken by Remus, who sprang up, and cried, —

"Tiens! le 'Fohmidable'!"

Pani Elzen cast a glance of displeasure at her younger son. She knew the value of that moment, in which every next word might weigh in her fate decisively.

"Remus," said she, "will you be quiet?"

"But, mamma, it is the 'Fohmidable'!" [14 - Romulus and Remus lisp or pronounce r in the Parisian manner, hence the use of h instead of r in the above words, both French and Polish.]

"What an unendurable boy!"

"Pouhquoi?"[15 - Romulus and Remus lisp or pronounce r in the Parisian manner, hence the use of h instead of r in the above words, both French and Polish.]

"He is a duhen[16 - Romulus and Remus lisp or pronounce r in the Parisian manner, hence the use of h instead of r in the above words, both French and Polish.] [duren, a simpleton]; but this time he is right," called out Romulus, quickly; "yesterday we were at Villa Franca," – here he turned to Svirski. "You saw us go on velocipedes; they told us there that the whole squadron had arrived except the 'Fohmidable,' which was due to-day."

To this Remus answered with a strong accent on every last syllable, —

"Thou art a duhen,[17 - Romulus and Remus lisp or pronounce r in the Parisian manner, hence the use of h instead of r in the above words, both French and Polish.] thyself!"

The boys fell to punching each other with their elbows. Pani Elzen, knowing how Svirski disliked her sons' style of speech, and generally the manner in which they were reared, commanded them to be silent.

"I have told you and Pan Kresovich," said she, "not to speak among yourselves in any language but Polish."

Kresovich was a student from Zürich, with incipient lung disease; Pani Elzen had found him on the Riviera, and engaged him as tutor for her sons, after her acquaintance with Svirski, and especially after a public declaration of the malicious and wealthy Pan Vyadrovski, that respectable houses had ceased to rear their sons as commercial travellers.