Without Dogma. Henryk Sienkiewicz

first."

      She trusts me altogether. Rightly or wrongly, I have the reputation of fickleness in regard to women, and Aniela must have heard remarks about it; maybe it is for that very reason the dear girl shows such unbounded confidence in me. I understand, and can almost hear the pure soul saying: "They wrong you—you are not fickle; and those who accuse you of fickleness do not know what love means, and did not love you as truly and deeply as I love you."

      Perhaps I am a little fickle by nature, and this disposition, developed under the influence of the barren, empty, worthless sentiments I met with in the world—this might have dried up my heart and corrupted it altogether; in which case Aniela would have to pay for the sins of others. But I believe the case is not hopeless, and the blessed physician has not come too late. Who knows whether it be ever too late, and that the pure, honest love of a woman does not possess the power to raise the dead? Perhaps, too, the masculine heart has a greater power of recuperation. There is a legend about the rose of Jericho, which, though dry to the core, revives and brings forth leaves when touched by a drop of dew. I have noticed that the male nature has more elasticity than the female. A man steeped in such utter corruption that half of its venom would cover the woman with moral leprosy is able to throw off the contagion, and recover easily not only his moral freshness, but even a certain virginity of heart. It is the same with the affections. I have known women whose hearts were so used up that they lost every capacity of loving, even of respecting anything or anybody. I have never known men like that. Decidedly, love cleanses our hearts. Definitions like these sound strange from a sceptic's pen; but in the first place I have no more belief in my doubts than I have in any other kind of assertions, axioms, and observations which serve general humanity as a basis of life. I am ready to admit at any moment that my doubts are as far removed from the essence of things as are these axioms. Secondly, I am writing now under the influence of my love for Aniela, who, maybe, does not know herself how wisely she is acting, and how by that very trust in me she has secured a powerful hold on my affections. Lastly, whenever I speak of love, or any other principle of life, I speak and write of it as it appears to me in the present. What my opinion about it will be to-morrow, I do not know. Ah, if I but knew that whatever view I take or principle I confess would withstand the blasting scepticism of to-morrow or the days following, I would make it my canon of life, and float along with sails unfurled, like Sniatynski, in the light, instead of groping my way in darkness and solitude.

      But I do not intend to go back now to my inner tragedy. As to love in general, from the standpoint of a sceptic in regard to the world and its manifestations, I might say with Solomon, "Vanitas vanitatum;" but I should be utterly blind did I not perceive that of all active principles this is the most powerful—so powerful indeed that whenever I think of it or my eyes roam over the everlasting ocean of all-life, I am simply struck with amazement at its almightiness. Though these are known things, as much known as the rising of the sun and the tides of the ocean, nevertheless they are always wonderful.

      After Empedocles, who divined that Eros evolved the worlds from Chaos, metaphysics have not advanced one step. Only death is a power equally absolute; yet in the eternal struggle between the two, love is the stronger; love conquers death by night and day, conquers it every spring, follows death step by step, throwing fresh grain into the gulf it creates. People occupied with every-day affairs forget or do not wish to remember that they are love's servants. It is strange when we come to think of it that the warrior, the chancellor of state, the cultivator of the soil, the merchant, the banker, in all their efforts, which apparently have nothing to do with love, are merely furthering its ends; that is, they serve the law of nature which bids the man to stretch out his arms for the woman. A mad paradox it would seem to a Bismarck if he were told that the final and only aim of all his endeavors is to further the love of Hermann and Dorothea. It seems even to me a paradox; and yet Bismarck's aim is the consolidation of the German empire, and this can be achieved only through Hermann and Dorothea. What else, then, has a Bismarck to do but to create by the help of politics and bayonets such conditions that Hermann and Dorothea may love each other in peace, unite in happiness, and bring up new generations?

      When at the university I read an Arabian ghazel in which the poet compares the power of love to that of infernal torments. I forget the name of the poet, but the idea remained in my memory. Truly, love is the one power that lasts for all times, holds the world together, and creates new worlds.

      10 March.

      To-day I tore up three or four letters to Aniela. After dinner, I went into my father's room to talk with him about my aunt's plans. I found him looking through a lens at some epilichnions with the earth still adhering to them, he had received from the Peloponnesus. How splendid he looked in that light coming through stained windows in the large room full of Etruscan vases, statues more or less mutilated, and all kinds of Greek and Roman treasures. Among these surroundings his face reminded me of a divine Plato or of some other Greek sage. When I entered he interrupted his work, listened attentively to what I had to say, and then asked, "Do you hesitate?"

      "No, I do not hesitate, but I am reflecting. I want to know why I want it."

      "Then I will tell you this; I was once like you, inclined to analyze not only my own feelings but all manifestations of life. When I came to know your mother I lost that faculty at once. I knew one thing only, that I wanted her, and did not care to know anything else. Therefore if you have a like powerful desire, marry. I express myself wrongly, for if you wish it very much you will do it without anybody's help or advice, and be as happy as I was until your mother died."

      We remained silent for some time. If I were to apply my father's words closely to my own case, I should feel small comfort. I love Aniela, there is no doubt; but I have not arrived yet at a state that precludes all reflection. But I do not consider this as a bad sign; it simply means that I belong to a generation that has gone a step farther on the way to knowledge.

      There are always two persons within me—the actor, and the spectator. Often the spectator is dissatisfied with the actor, but at present they both agree.

      My father was the first to interrupt the silence.

      "Tell me what she is like."

      Since a description is an unsatisfactory way of painting a portrait, I showed my father a large and really excellent photograph of Aniela, at which he looked with the keenest interest. I was no less interested in the study of his face, in which I saw not only the roused artist, but also the refined connoisseur of female beauty, the old Leon l'Invincible. Resting the photograph on the poor hand half paralyzed, he put on his eyeglass with the right, and then holding the likeness at a longer or shorter distance he began to say: "But for certain details, the face is like one of those Ary-Schaeffer liked to paint. How lovely she would look with tears in her eyes. Some people dislike angelic faces in women, but I think that to teach an angel how to become a woman is the very height of victory. She is very beautiful, very uncommon looking. 'Enfin, tout ce qu'il y a de plus beau au monde—c'est la femme.'"