I SAW a miracle, and that’s the end of it.
Now for the first time I understand why a man has eyes.
Corpo di Bacco; what beauty!
I am walking with Ostrynski; I see on a sudden at the corner of Willow Street some woman passing quickly. I stand as if fixed to the earth; I become oak; I become stone; I stare; I lose consciousness; without knowing it I seize Ostrynski by the cravat; I loosen his cravat—and—save me, or I die!
What that she has perfect features? It is not the features, she is simply an artist’s ideal, a masterpiece as outline, a masterpiece as coloring, a masterpiece as sentiment. Greuze would have risen from the dead in her presence, and hanged himself then for having painted so much ugliness.
I gaze and gaze. She is walking alone,—how alone? Poetry is walking with her; music, spring, splendor, and love are walking with her. I know not whether I should prefer to paint her immediately; I should rather kneel before her and kiss her feet, because such a woman was born. Finally, do I know what I would do?
She passes us as serenely as a summer day. Ostrynski bows to her; but she does not see him. I wake from my amazement and cry,—
“Let us follow her!”
“No,” answers Ostrynski; “have you gone mad? I must tie my cravat. Give me peace! that is an acquaintance of mine.”
“An acquaintance of yours? Present me.”
“I do not think of it; look to your own betrothed.”
I hurl a curse at Ostrynski and his posterity to the ninth generation; then I wish to fly after the unknown. To my misfortune, she has entered an open carriage. Only from a distance do I see her straw hat and red parasol.
“Do you know her really?” ask I of Ostrynski.
“I know all people.”
“Who is she?”
“Pani Helena Kolchanovski of the house of Turno, otherwise Panna Vdova [Miss Widow], so called.”
“Why Miss Widow?”
“Because her husband died at their wedding supper. If you have recovered, I will tell you her history. There was a rich, childless bachelor, Kolchanovski de Kolchanovo, a noble of the Ukraine. He had immensely honorable relatives who hoped to be his heirs, and an immeasurably short neck, which gave the greater hopes to the heirs. I knew those heirs. They were in truth perfectly honorable people; but what’s to be done? The most honorable and the least interested of them could not refrain from looking at Kolchanovski’s neck. This annoyed the old man so intensely that out of spite to the family he paid court to a neighbor’s daughter, drew up a document, conveyed to her all his property, then married her; after the ceremony there was dancing; at the end of the dancing a supper; at the end of the supper apoplexy killed him on the spot. In that way Madame Helena Kolchanovski became Miss Widow.”
“Was that long ago?”
“Three years. At that time she was twenty-two years of age. Since then she might have married twenty-two times; but she doesn’t want to marry. People supposed that she was waiting for a prince. It turned out that that was not true; for she fired a prince out a little while ago. Besides I know well that she has no pretensions; the best proof of which is that Pani Kolchanovski lives to this time in close friendship with our well-known, sympathetic, gifted, etc., Eva Adami, who was a friend of hers in the boarding-school.”
Hearing this, I just jumped from joy. If that is true, no more of Ostrynski. My beloved, honest Evusia 18 will smooth the way for my acquaintance with Pani Helena.
“Well, then you won’t take me to her?” asked I of Ostrynski.
“Decidedly not; if any man wishes to make the acquaintance of any one in the city, why, he will make it,” answered Ostrynski; “but because you put me out with Kazia, I do not wish people to say in the present case that I caused— Do I know? Be in good health!” 19