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"Oh, my Yozia! how I love thee!"
"Go to the plague, Selim!" I would say to him.
"Oh, it is thou, not Yozia," he would answer roguishly, and return to his book.
At last came the days of examination. Selim and I passed both the final examination of the gymnasium and the one for entrance to the University very favorably; after that we were as free as birds, but we stayed three days longer in Warsaw. We used that time for getting students' uniforms, and for a solemnity which our master considered indispensable; that is, a feast for three in the first wine-cellar that we came to.
After the second bottle, when Selim's head and mine were turning, and when to the cheeks of our master, now a comrade, a flush came, we were seized by a sudden and uncommon tenderness, combined with an inclination to confessions of the heart.
"Well, ye have come out among people, my boys," said the master, "and the world stands open before you. Ye can amuse yourselves now, throw away money, play the lord, fall in love; but I tell you that these are follies. A life on the surface, without an idea for which a man lives, toils, and struggles, is folly. But to live wisely or to live reasonably, and to struggle wisely, one should look on things soberly. As to me, I think that I look on them soberly. I believe in nothing which I cannot touch myself, and I advise the same to you. God knows there are so many ways of living and thinking in the world, and all in such confusion, that one needs the devil knows what kind of head to avoid error. But I hold fast to science, and that's the end of it. They will not entrap me with trifles. That life is foolish, over this theme I shall not break a bottle on any man's head; but we have science. Had we not, I would shoot myself. Every one has the right to do that, as I think; and I will shoot myself surely if I grow bankrupt to that degree. But on my foundation one will not be bankrupt. Thou wilt be deceived in everything: fall in love, the woman will deceive thee; have religion, the moment of doubt will come; but thou mayst sit quietly till death investigating the canal of the nutritive infusoria, and wilt not even notice how on a certain day the world will stupidly grow somehow and somehow dark to thee, and then the end, – the water clock, the portrait in the illustrated paper, the more or less dull biography, and the comedy will be over! After that there will be nothing. I can give you my word on that, my little fellows. Ye may be bold in believing in no nonsense. Science is my fiddle-bow; Science is the foundation. Meanwhile all this has the good side, – that if thou occupy thyself with such things, thou mayst go about in broken boots boldly and sleep on a hay-loft. It will make no difference to thee. Do ye understand?"
"To the health and honor of science!" cried Selim, whose eyes were gleaming like coals.
Our master pushed back his immense woolly forelock, emptied his goblet, then inhaling smoke he let two enormous currents of it out through his nostrils, and continued, —
"Besides exact sciences – Selim, thou art drunk! – besides exact sciences there is philosophy, and there are ideas. With these life is filled to the brim. But I prefer exact sciences. Philosophy, and especially ideal-real philosophy, I tell you that I revile it. It is guess-work. A man is pursuing truth, as it were, but pursuing it as a dog pursues his own tail. In general I cannot endure guess-work. I love facts. Thou canst not squeeze whey out of water. As to ideas, that is another thing. For them it is worth while to lay down one's head; but ye and your fathers travel by stupid ways. I tell you that. Long life to ideas!"
We emptied our goblets again. Our forelocks were steaming. The dark room of the cellar seemed still darker; the candles on the table burned with a faint light; smoke hid the pictures on the walls. Outside the window in the yard an old beggar was singing the pious hymn, "Holy, heavenly, angelic Lady!" and in the pauses he played a plaintive minstrel melody on a fiddle. Wonderful feelings filled my breast. I believed the words of the master, but I felt that he had not told everything yet which could fill out one's life. Something was lacking. A species of melancholy possessed me in spite of myself; so under the influence of imagination, wine, and momentary enthusiasm I said in a low voice, —
"But women, gentlemen! a loving woman, devoted, who stops at nothing in life?"
Selim began to sing, —
"Woman is changeable:
Stupid the man who believes in her!"
Our master looked at me with a peculiar expression. He was thinking of something else, but soon he shook himself and said, —
"Oh, ho! thou hast shown the tip of the sentimental ear. Knowest thou, that Selim will go much farther in the world than thou. The deuce will take thee. Guard thyself, guard thyself, I say, lest some petticoat crawl into thy path and spoil thy life. Woman! woman!" (here the master blinked according to his custom), "I know that ware somewhat. I cannot complain; God knows I cannot. But I know this too, that thou must not give thy finger to the devil, for right away he will take thy whole hand. Woman! love! all our misfortune is in this, that we make great things out of nonsense. If thou wish to amuse thyself as I do, amuse thyself, but don't put thy life in it. Have reason at once, and do not pay good coin for false goods. Do ye think that I complain of women? I do not even dream of doing so. On the contrary, I love them; but I do not let myself be taken by chaff of my own imagining. I remember when I fell in love the first time with a certain Lola, I thought, for example, that her dress was sacred, but it was calico. That's the point. Was it her fault that she walked in mud instead of flying through the heavens? No! it was I who was stupid, through putting wings on her by force. Man is rather a limited beast. One or another of us carries God knows what ideal in his heart, and therewith feels a need of loving; hence on seeing the first little goose that he meets, he says to himself, 'That is she.' Afterward he finds out that he has made a mistake, and because of that small mistake the devil takes him, or he lives an idiot all his life."
"But you will acknowledge," said I, "that a man feels the need of loving, and surely you feel that need as well as others."
A scarcely discernible smile shot across his lips.
"Every necessity may be satisfied," answered he, "in various ways. I help myself in my own way. I have said that I do not look on stupid things as great. I am sober, God knows, more sober than at this moment. But I have seen many men who have broken their lives, or snarled them up, like a thread, for one woman; so I say that it is not worth while to put all one's life in that. I say that there are better things, loftier objects, and that love is a trifling matter. To the health of sobriety!"
"To the health of women!" shouted Selim.
"Very good; let us have that," answered our master. "They are agreeable creatures, only take them not too seriously. To the health of women!"
"To the health of Yozia!" cried I, touching Selim's glass.
"Wait! Now is my turn," answered he. "To the health of thy Hania! one deserves the other."
The blood began to play in me, and sparks flashed from my eyes.
"Be silent, Selim," cried I. "Do not mention that name before me in this shop!"
Then I threw my glass to the floor, and it broke into a thousand bits.
"Hast gone mad?" cried our master.
I had not gone mad at all, but anger had sprung up in me and was blazing like a flame. I could listen to everything which the master said about women; I could even take pleasure in it; I could ridicule them with others. I could do that because I did not connect the words and the ridicule with any one of my own, and because it did not even come to my mind that the general theory was to be applied to persons dear to me. But when I heard the name of my purest orphan bandied about frivolously in that room, amid smoke, dirt, empty bottles, corks, and cynical conversation, I thought that I had heard some abominable sacrilege, some defilement, some wrong wrought against Hania, and from anger I almost lost self-control.
Selim looked at me for a moment with astonishment, and then his face began to grow dark quickly, his eyes shot sparks, on his forehead came out knots of veins, his features extended and became sharp as those of a real Tartar.
"Thou dost forbid me to say what I please?" cried he, in a deep voice, broken by panting breath.
Luckily