The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [27]
Amidst the permanent population of this enchanted world an ordinary mortal would sometimes appear, who had succeeded in reaching the heights of Olympus on the wings of fame. He might be an engineer who had linked two oceans or drilled through mountains, or a captain who had lost his entire company in a battle with savages and, although gravely wounded, had himself been spared by the love of a Negro princess. He might be a traveller who was said to have discovered a new part of the globe, had been shipwrecked on a desert island and even tasted human flesh.
There were also eminent painters and in particular there were inspired poets who wrote charming verses in the albums of the princesses, poets who might fall hopelessly in love and render the charms of their cruel goddess immortal, first in the newspapers then in slim volumes printed on vellum.
All these people, among whom there carefully moved a crowd of uniformed footmen, female companions, poor cousins and relatives seeking promotion — all these people were on a permanent holiday.
From midday they visited one another and returned visits, or drove to the shops. In the evenings, they amused themselves before, at and after dinner. Then they drove to a concert or the theatre, there to see another artificial world, in which heroes rarely ate or worked, but frequently talked to themselves, where the infidelity of a woman caused tremendous catastrophes and where a lover, slain by the husband in Act Five, would rise from the dead next day to perpetrate the same mistakes and talk to himself without being heard by the person standing next to him. On leaving the theatre, they gathered in drawing-rooms again, and servants carried cold or warm drinks about, artistes sang, young married ladies listened to the wounded captain talk about his Negro princess, unmarried young ladies talked to the poets about affinities of the soul, elderly gentlemen gave the engineers their views on engineering and middle-aged ladies fought one another with hints and glances for the sake of the traveller who had eaten human flesh. Then they sat down to supper, at which mouths ate, stomachs digested and little shoes under the table talked about the feelings of frozen hearts and the dreams of unfeeling heads. Then they would separate, to regain their strength for the dream of life in real sleep.
Outside this enchanted world was yet another world — the ordinary one.
Izabela knew of its existence, and even liked gazing at it from the window of her carriage or boudoir. Framed thus, and at a distance, that world seemed picturesque, even charming. She saw farm labourers slowly ploughing the earth, great wagons drawn by broken-down nags, hawkers of fruit and vegetables, an old man breaking stones at the roadside, messengers hurrying by, pretty and impudent flower-girls, a family consisting of father, stout mother and four little children holding hands in pairs, a dandy of the lower world travelling in a droshky and behaving quite absurdly — and sometimes a funeral. And she told herself that this world, though inferior, was charming; it was even more charming than paintings of low life, for it moved and changed.
And Izabela also knew that just as flowers bloomed in hot-houses and vines in vineyards, so things necessary to her grew in that inferior world. It was from that world that loyal Mikołaj and the maid Anna came,