The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [232]
In this way, Paris was an ark in which were housed the trophies of a dozen centuries, if not whole millenniums, of civilisation. There was everything here, from monstrous Assyrian statues and Egyptian mummies, to the latest discoveries of mechanics and electrotechnology, from jars in which Egyptian women had carried their water 4000 years ago, to the great hydraulic wheels of St-Maur.
‘The men who created these marvels,’ thought Wokulski, ‘or who collected them together in one place, they were not crazed idlers like myself…’
And thus saying to himself, he felt overcome by shame.
And, after dealing with Suzin’s business for a few hours, he would wander around Paris. He strolled down unknown streets, immersed himself in a crowd of thousands, plunged into the apparent chaos of things and events, and at the bottom of it all he found order and law. Then again he would drink brandy for a change, play cards or roulette, or give way to dissipation. It seemed to him that he was going to encounter something extraordinary in this volcanic centre of civilisation, and that a new epoch in his life would start here. At the same time he felt that his hitherto scattered fragments of knowledge and his opinions would merge into a sort of unity or philosophical system, which might explain to him many of the world’s mysteries and the meaning of his own existence.
‘What am I?’ he asked himself sometimes, and gradually he formulated his own reply: ‘I am a man who has gone to waste. I had great talents and energy, but have done nothing for civilisation. The eminent people I meet here don’t have even half my powers, yet they leave behind them machines, buildings, works of art, new ideas. But what shall I leave behind? My store, perhaps—but that would have gone to wrack and ruin if Rzecki were not looking after it…Yet I haven’t been idle: I struggled for three men, and had I not been helped by chance I wouldn’t even have the fortune I now possess.’
Then it occurred to him to ask what he had squandered his powers and his life on? ‘On struggling with an environment into which I didn’t fit. When I wanted to study, I could not, because in my country scholars aren’t needed—only peasants and store clerks. When I wanted to serve society by sacrificing my own life if need be, fantastic dreams were put forward instead of a practical programme and then—were forgotten. When I sought work, I was not given any, but shown an easy way to marry an old woman for her money. When I finally fell in love, and wanted to become the legal father of a family, the pastor of a domestic circle, the holiness of which everyone acclaimed, then I was placed in a situation from which there was no way out. So much so, that I don’t know whether the woman I was crazy about was an ordinary flirt whose head had been turned, or perhaps a lost soul like myself, who had not found her proper way. Judging by her behaviour, she is an eligible young lady looking for the best possible husband: when one looks into her eyes, she is an angelic spirit, whose wings have been clipped by human conventions. If I’d had some tens of thousands of roubles a year, and a passion for whist, I’d have been the happiest man in Warsaw,’ he said to himself, ‘but because in addition to a stomach I have a soul which is greedy for knowledge and love, I would have had to perish there. That is a region where certain kinds of plants cannot grow, nor certain kinds of people either…’
And at this moment, for the first time, the idea of not returning to Poland appeared clearly to him: ‘I’ll sell the shop,’ he thought, ‘withdraw my capital and settle in Paris. I