The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [204]
Staś did not play; he only walked about between the card-tables and watched.
‘Staś,’ I sometimes said, ‘take care! You’re forty-three …At that age Bismarck had barely started his career.’
This, or similar remarks, roused him momentarily. Then he would throw himself into a chair and brood, with his head resting on his hand. Thereupon Małgosia would hurry in, crying: ‘Staś, ducky! You’re brooding again, we can’t have that …And the gentlemen have drunk their wine …’ So Staś rose, brought another bottle from the sideboard, poured wine into eight glasses and walked around the tables watching the gentlemen playing whist.
In this manner the lion was slowly but surely being transformed into a tame bull. When I saw him in his Turkish dressing-gown, slippers embroidered with beads and a silk night-cap, I could not believe that this was the same Wokulski who, fourteen years earlier in Machalski’s cellar, had exclaimed: ‘I will!’
When Kochanowski wrote: ‘And thou shalt sit upon a fierce lion without fear, and ride on a huge dragon,’ he certainly had a woman in mind! For they are the riders and conquerors of the male sex!
Then, in the fifth year of marriage, Małgosia suddenly took to cosmetics …At first discreetly, then more energetically, and to all kinds …Hearing of a certain fluid which was said to return freshness and the charms of youth to ladies of a certain age, she anointed herself with it from top to toe one evening, with such effect that the doctors called in that very night to help could do nothing for her. And she died, poor thing, of blood-poisoning, only recovering consciousness sufficiently to call her lawyer and bequeath her entire estate to her dear Staś.
Staś said nothing after this misfortune either, but grew more mopish than ever. As he had an income of several thousand roubles a year, he stopped concerning himself with trade, broke off with his acquaintances and buried himself in learned books. I sometimes told him: ‘Go out and meet people, enjoy yourself, after all, you’re still young and could marry again …’
All in vain …
One day (six months after the death of Małgosia), seeing the lad growing old before my very eyes, I suggested: ‘Staś, be off with you to the theatre. Today Traviata is playing; you saw it with your wife last time …’
He jumped up from the sofa, where he had been reading, and said: ‘You know, you’re quite right. I’ll see what it’s like this evening …’
He went to the theatre and …next day I hardly recognised him: my Staś Wokulski had awoken in the old man. He straightened up, his eyes regained their fire, his voice its strength…
From that time on he went to all the performances, concerts and lectures. Soon afterwards he left for Bulgaria, where he made his huge fortune, and a few months after his return an old gossip (Mrs Meliton) told me Staś was in love …
I laughed at this chatter, for no one who is in love goes off to a war. Not until now, alas, have I begun to suspect that the old woman was right.
And yet one never knows with Staś Wokulski. Just supposing …If it were so, how I’d laugh at Dr Szuman, who mocks politics so!
XXI
The Journal of the Old Clerk
THE POLITICAL situation is so uncertain that I should not be surprised if a war broke out in December. People still seem to think that wars can only break out in the spring; evidently they forget that the Franco-Prussian war started in summer. I do not share this prejudice against winter campaigns. In winter, the barns are full and the roads smooth; whereas in spring the peasants have no grain left and the roads are like cake: should a battery pass, you could take a bath there.
Winter nights, on the other hand, continue ten hours or more, warm clothes are needed, quarters for the troops, typhus …I sometimes thank God he did not make a Moltke of me: he must be worried to death, poor devil. The Austrians, or rather the Hungarians, have marched into