After a while it came to his mind that this was merely a species of weakness,--such, for example, as follows an operation in surgery, or an illness that a man has passed through,--and that positive life will fill out in time that void which he feels. For him positive life was his mercantile house. When he went to dine, he found Vaskovski and two servants, who winked at each other when they saw how the old man at times held motionless an uplifted fork with a morsel of meat on it, and fell to thinking of death, or talking to himself. Professor Vaskovski had for some time been holding these monologues, and spoke to himself on the street so distinctly that people looked around at him. His blue eyes were turned on Pan Stanislav for a while vacantly; then he roused himself, as if from sleep, and finished the thought which had risen in his head. "She says that this will bring her near the child." "Who says?" inquired Pan Stanislav. "Pani Emilia." "How will she be nearer?" "She wants to become a Sister of Charity." Pan Stanislav grew silent under the impression of that news. He was able to meditate over that which passed through his head, to expel feeling, to philosophize on the unwholesome excesses of the society in which he lived; but in his soul he had two sacred images,--Litka and Pani Emilia. Litka had become simply a cherished memory, but he loved Pani Emilia with a living, brotherly, and most tender affection, which he never touched in his meditations. So for a time he could not find speech; then he looked sternly at Vaskovski, and said,-- "Professor, thou art persuading her to this. I do not enter into thy mysticism and ideas from beneath a dark star, but know this,--that thou wilt take her life on thy conscience; for she has not the strength to be a Sister of Charity, and will die in a year." "My dear friend," answered Vaskovski, "thou hast condemned me unjustly without a hearing. Hast thou stopped to consider what the expression 'just man' means?" "When it is a question of one dear to me, I jeer at expressions."