The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [162]
He saw something else too. When Izabela’s beautiful face expressed greatest admiration, then Wokulski rubbed the top of his head with one hand. And then, as if in response to an order, violent applause and noisy shouts were heard from the balcony and gallery: ‘Bravo, bravo Rossi!’ It even seemed to Ignacy that somewhere in the chorus he could distinguish the weary voice of Oberman the cashier, which began yelling first and was the last to fall silent.
‘Upon my soul,’ he thought, ‘can Wokulski be directing a claque?’
But he at once abandoned this unworthy thought. For Rossi acted splendidly and everyone applauded with equal vigour. Mr Pifke, the jolly pie-maker, applauded most of all and, in accordance with the agreement, handed Rossi the album with a great deal of to-do after the third act. The celebrated actor did not even nod to Pifke, but he made a very deep bow in the direction of the box in which Izabela was sitting and perhaps—in that direction alone.
‘It’s a delusion! A fancy!’ thought Ignacy as he left the theatre after the last act, ‘after all, Staś would not be so stupid as to…’
In the end, however, Ignacy was not displeased with his visit to the theatre. Rossi’s acting delighted him; some scenes, such as the murder of King Duncan and the appearance of Banquo’s ghost had made a powerful impression on him, and he had also been quite delighted by the way Macbeth fought with his sword. So, as he left the theatre, he was not so vexed with Wokulski; on the contrary he even began wondering whether his dear Staś had invented all that business of handing Rossi a gift merely in order to give him pleasure. ‘He knows, does my honest Staś,’ he thought, ‘that I’d only go to the Italian actors if I were forced to. Well, and it turned out nicely after all. That fellow acts wonderfully well, I must see him again…Besides,’ he added after a moment, ‘anyone with as much money as Staś can give presents to actors if he chooses…I must say I’d prefer some nicely built actress, but I’m a man of another age; they even call me a Bonapartist and a Romantic…’
Thinking this, he muttered softly to himself, for he was fretted by another thought which he wanted to suppress: ‘Why had Staś stared so oddly at the box in which the Countess, Mr Łęcki and Miss Łęcka were sitting? Could it possibly be…? Oh, for goodness sake…Surely Wokulski had too much sense to suppose that anything could come of that…Any child could see that that girl, usually as cold as ice, was crazy about Rossi…How she looked at him, how she even sometimes forgot herself, and in the theatre too, in the presence of a thousand other people. No, that is nonsense. They are quite right to call me a Romantic…’
And he tried yet again to think about something else. He even went (despite the lateness of the hour) into a restaurant, where a band consisting of fiddles, a pianoforte and a harp was playing. He ate roast meat with potatoes and cabbage, drank a tankard of beer, then another, then a third and a fourth…not to mention a seventh. He even grew bold enough to put two 40-groszy pieces in the harpist’s tray and begin humming. Then it occurred to him he simply must introduce himself to four Germans eating tripe and onions at the next table. ‘But why should I introduce myself to them? Let them introduce themselves to me,’ thought Ignacy.
At this moment he was preoccupied by the idea that those four gentlemen ought to introduce themselves to him, because he was an older person, also a former officer of the Hungarian infantry which had well and truly defeated the Germans. He even summoned