But she continued, "My husband will not believe that I am in love with Nemi; but I am. When I was there, it seemed to me that Christianity had not reached the place yet; that in the night certain priests come out and celebrate pagan rites on the lake. Silence and mystery! there you have Nemi. Will you believe that when I was there the wish came to me to be a hermit, and it has not left me to this moment? I would build a cell on the bank of the lake for myself, and wear a robe long and gray, like the habit of Saint Francis of Assisi, and go barefoot. What would I give to be a hermit! I see myself at the lake--" "Anetka,[8] but what would become of me?" inquired Osnovski, half in jest, half in earnest. "Oh, thou wouldst console thyself," said she, curtly. "Thou wouldst be a hermitess," thought Pan Stanislav, "if on the other side of the lake there were a couple of dozen dandies gazing through glasses to see what the hermitess was doing, and how she looked." He was too well-bred to tell her this directly; but he told her something similar, and which could be understood. "Naturally," said she, laughing; "I should live by alms, and should have to see people sometimes; if you came to Nemi, I should come to you too and repeat in a very low voice, 'Un soldo! un soldo!'" Saying this, she stretched her small hands to him, and shook them, repeating humbly,-- "Un soldo per la povera! un soldo!" And she looked into his eyes. Pan Osnovski spoke meanwhile to Marynia. "This is called Three Fountains," said he, "for there are three springs here. Saint Paul's head was cut off at this place; and there is a tradition that the head jumped three times, and that on those places springs burst forth. The place belongs now to the Trappists. Formerly people could not pass a night here, there was such fever; now there is less, for they have planted a whole forest of eucalyptuses on the hills. Oh, we can see it already." But Pani Osnovski, bending back somewhat, half closed her eyes for a moment, and said to Pan Stanislav,-- "This Roman air intoxicates me. I am as if beside myself. At home I cannot force from life more than it gives me; but here I am demoralized, I feel that something is wanting to me. Do I know what? Here one feels something, divines something, yearns for something. Maybe that is bad. Maybe it is not right for me to say this. But I say always what passes through my mind. At home, when a child, they called me Little Sincerity. I shall beg my husband to take me hence. It may be better to live in my own narrow shell, like a nut, or a snail." "It may be pleasant in shells for nuts or snails," answered Pan Stanislav, with gravity, "but not for birds, and besides birds of paradise, of which there is a tradition that they have no legs and can never rest, but must fly and fly." "What a beautiful tradition!" exclaimed Pani Osnovski. And, raising her hands, she began to move them, imitating the motion of wings, and repeating,--