The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [122]
‘Baron…’ the Duchess interrupted.
‘Surely I have not said anything wrong, have I? I merely said I have the devil’s own luck…’
Wokulski, standing behind, touched his arm: ‘A word, Baron,’ he said.
‘Oh, it is you, is it?’ the Baron replied, eyeing him. They stepped aside.
‘You pushed me, Baron…’
‘I beg your pardon…’
‘That is not enough…’
‘Surely you don’t expect satisfaction from me?’ the Baron asked.
‘Precisely so…’
‘In that case, I’m at your service,’ said the Baron, looking for a visiting-card, ‘oh, confound it, I didn’t bring any…Perhaps you have a notebook and pencil, Mr Wokulski?’
Wokulski handed him a pencil and notebook, in which the Baron wrote his name and address, not omitting to add a flourish to it. ‘I shall be delighted,’ he said, bowing to Wokulski, ‘to finish off the accounts for my Sultanka.’
‘I shall endeavour to give you full satisfaction.’ They parted with an exchange of the most elegant bows.
‘A quarrel, upon my word,’ said the mortified Mr Łęcki, who had seen this exchange of civilities. The Countess, vexed, ordered the carriage to go home without waiting for the races to finish. Wokulski barely had time to catch up with the carriage and bid goodbye to the ladies.
Before the carriage moved away, Izabela leaned out, gave Wokulski the tips of her fingers and whispered: ‘Merci, monsieur…’
Wokulski was dazed with joy. He stayed until the last race without knowing what was going on around him; then, taking advantage of a pause, left the course.
Wokulski went straight from the races to Dr Szuman. The doctor was sitting by an open window, wearing a ragged, padded dressing-gown, proofing a thirty-page pamphlet on ethnography, which had taken over a thousand observations and four years of time to write. It was an article on the colour and form of hair of people living in the Polish kingdom. The learned doctor told everyone that a few dozen copies of the work would be published at most, but had secretly ordered the printing of four thousand copies, and was certain a second edition would be called for. Despite his jokes on his own beloved subject and complaints that no one was interested, Szuman believed in the depths of his soul that everyone in the civilised world would be extremely interested in the question of the colour of hair and relation between length and radius. At this very moment he was wondering whether it would be proper to head his article with the motto: ‘Show me your hair, and I shall tell you what you are.’
When Wokulski entered and sank wearily onto a sofa the doctor began: ‘How these proofreaders desecrate everything! Here I have a few hundred figures of three decimal places—but half of them are wrong! They think a thousandth or even a hundredth part of a millimetre is of no consequence, and do not realise—the ignoramuses!—that this is the whole point. Upon my word, it would have been impossible to invent or even print logarithmic tables in Poland. Your true Pole starts to sweat at the second decimal place, at the fifth he runs a temperature, and at the seventh has a stroke.…What have you been up to?’
‘I am going to fight a duel,’ Wokulski replied.
The doctor jumped up and ran over to the sofa so hastily that the wings of his dressing-gown gave him the look of a bat. ‘What? A duel?’ he cried, eyes flashing, ‘perhaps you think I’ll accompany you to serve as doctor? I am to stand and watch two fools shoot at one another’s heads, and perhaps attend one of them into the bargain? I wouldn’t dream of being involved in such tomfoolery!’ he exclaimed, both hands at his head, ‘and in any case I’m no surgeon, I gave up practising medicine long ago.’
‘Come as my second, then, if you won’t come as a doctor…’
‘Ah, that is another matter,’ the doctor replied without hesitation, adding, ‘who are you to fight this duel with, pray?’
‘Baron Krzeszowski.’
‘He’s a good shot,’ the doctor muttered, his lower lip protruding, and he went on, ‘what is it all about?’
‘He pushed me at the races…’
‘At the…? And what in Heaven