"The base wretches! The base wretches!" That was the one cry that arose in her heart, filled with rebellion and hatred. Janina no longer felt the shame and the humiliation, but only a boundless rage. She ran about the room as though she were mad, unknowingly ripped her waist and, unable to control her fury, fell exhausted upon her bed with her clothes on. Her sleep was one dreadful torment. She sprang up every minute with a cry as though to run away, then again, she raised her hand as though with a glass full of wine and shouted through her sleep: Vive! She would begin to sing or to cry every now and then with her feverish lips: "The base wretches! The base wretches!" CHAPTER IX In a few days after the premiere of The Churls, which remained upon the bill, but attracted ever smaller audiences, Glogowski came to Janina's home. "What is the matter with you? . . ." she exclaimed, extending her hand in friendly greeting. "Nothing. . . . Well, I improved my play a little. Did you read the criticisms?" "Some of them." "I have brought all the reviews," said Glogowski. "I'll read them." He began to read. One of the important weeklies maintained that The Churls was a very good, original, and superbly realistic play; that with Glogowski there had, at last, appeared a real dramatist who had let a current of fresh air into the stagnant and anaemic atmosphere of our dramatic creativity, and had given us real people and real life. The only cause for regret was that the staging of the play was beneath criticism and the acting of it, with one or two exceptions, scandalous. The reviewer of one of the most estimable dailies for two whole days rambled on in a special supplement about the history of the theater in France and about German actors, he discussed theatrical novelties and after every two paragraphs or so would remark in parenthesis: "I saw him at the Odeon," "I heard this at the Burg Theater" "I admired such acting in London," etc. Then he adduced various theatrical anecdotes, praised actors who had died half a century ago, harked back to the past of the stage, spoke in several paragraphs about the red rags of radicalism that had begun to appear on the stage, praised with paternal indulgence the actors appearing in The Churls, flattered Cabinski and wound up by saying that he would probably give his opinion of the play itself only after the author had written another one, for this one was merely to be forgiven a novice. A third reviewer contended that the play was not at all bad and would even be excellent, if the author had chosen to honor theatrical traditions and added music and dances to it. A fourth took a diametrically opposite viewpoint, maintaining that the play was positively worthless, that it was rubbish, but that the author possessed at least the one merit that he had avoided the cut and dried formulas by failing to introduce the usual songs and dances which always lower the value of folk plays.