The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [30]
Suddenly rumour had it that Mr Łęcki’s affairs were in a deplorable state, and Izabela found herself with only two suitors remaining from a whole battalion: these were a certain Baron and a certain marshal, both of them wealthy but old.
Now Izabela saw the ground was slipping away from beneath her feet, so she decided to lower her standards. But since the Baron and the marshal, in spite of their fortunes, aroused an unconquerable aversion in her, she postponed her final choice from one day to the next. Meanwhile, Mr Łęcki had quit society. The marshal could not wait for a reply and left for his country estate, while the heartbroken Baron went abroad — and Miss Izabela remained entirely alone. Of course, she knew that either of them would return if she summoned him, but which was she to choose, how could she stifle her aversion? What concerned her most of all, though, was whether it was possible to make such a sacrifice as this without any assurance that one day she might again acquire a fortune and would again be free to make her own choice. This time she would make her choice fully realising how difficult it was for her to live outside drawing-room society …
One thing greatly facilitated her marriage for rank. The fact was that Izabela had never been in love. This was due to her cold nature, and her belief that marriage survives with no poetic adjuncts, and finally an ideal love, the most extraordinary ever heard of.
Once in an art gallery, she had seen a statue of Apollo, which made such a strong impression upon her that she bought a fine copy, and had it placed in her boudoir. She would gaze at it for hours, would think of him … and who can tell how many kisses had warmed the hands and feet of the marble god? And a miracle came to pass: caressed by a loving woman, the clay had come to life. When one night she went to sleep weeping, the immortal stepped down from his pedestal and came to her in a laurel wreath, gleaming with a mystic glow.
He sat on the edge of her bed, gazed at her with eyes from which eternity looked out, then took her in his powerful embrace and brushed away her tears and cooled her fever with kisses from his pallid lips.
Henceforward he visited her more and more often, and as she swooned in his embraces, the god of light would whisper to her secrets of heaven and earth which had never before been uttered by a human tongue. And for love of her he wrought a still greater miracle, for his heavenly likeness was revealed to her in the features of men who at any time had made an impression on her.
Once he resembled a general (somewhat younger), who had won a battle and gazed upon the deaths of thousands of warriors. On another occasion he reminded her of the features of a celebrated tenor, to whom women threw flowers and whose carriage had been unharnessed by a crowd. Then he was a witty and handsome prince of the blood, a member of one of the oldest ruling families; or he was a brave fireman who won the Legion d’honneur for saving three persons from the fifth floor; or he was a great painter who had startled the world with the scope of his imagination; and sometimes he was a Venetian gondolier, or a circus acrobat of great charm and strength.
For a while, each of these men had captured Izabela’s secret thoughts, to each of them she had devoted the most silent of sighs, knowing that for one reason or another she could not love him — and each had appeared to her in the shape of the god, in dreams that were half-real. From these visions, Izabela’s eyes took on a new expression — a supernatural brooding. Sometimes her eyes would gaze far above other people, and beyond this world; and when the golden and ash-coloured hair on her temples was disordered, as if dishevelled by a mysterious breath, then the observers seemed to behold an angel or saint.
A year earlier, at one such moment, Wokulski had seen Izabela. From that time onward his heart had known no peace.
Almost simultaneously, Tomasz had broken with society and