Lately she had become intimate with Stanislawski for she felt that something similar was happening to him. He never spoke to her about it, nor ever complained, but now, when he bent toward her his thin, waxen face all seamed with wrinkles as fine as hairs, his yellowish eyes glowed gloomily. "Did you notice how Cabinska played to-day?" she asked him. "Did I notice?" answered Stanislawski, "I see that every day. I know long ago what they are . . . long ago! What is Cabinski himself? . . . A clown and tightrope walker who in our days would not even have been permitted to play the part of a lackey! . . . And Wladek! he's an artist, is he? . . . A beast who makes a public house of the stage! . . . He plays only for his mistresses! His noblemen are shoemakers and barbers, while his barbers and shoemakers are loafers from the water front . . . What do they introduce on the stage? . . . Hooligans, the street, slang and mud. . . . And what is Glas? . . . A drunkard in life, which is a minor consideration, but it is not permissible for a true artist to wander about taverns with the most disgusting hoodlums; it is not permissible for a true artist to introduce on the stage the hiccoughs of a drunkard and vulgar brutality. . . . Take Ziolkowski's The Master and the Apprentice for instance: there you have a type, a finished type of a drunkard presented in broad and classical outlines; there is gesture and pose and mimicry, but there is also nobility. What does Glas make of that role? . . . He makes a filthy, repulsive, drunken shoemaker of the lowest order. That is their art! . . . And Piesh? . . . Piesh is also not much better, although he bears the stamp of a good artist . . . but his acting is a miserable and an everlasting botch; he has a humor on the stage, like that of fighting dogs, but not human and noble . . . and not ours! . . ." He became silent a moment and rubbed his eyes with his long skinny hand with thin, knotty fingers. "And Krzykiewicz? . . . and Wawrzecki? . . . and Razowiec? . . . perhaps they are artists, eh? . . . Artists! . . . Do you remember Kalacinski? . . . He was an artist! Or Krzensinski, Stobinski, Felek, and Chelchowski? . . . Those were artists who could bring down the house! . . . What are our actors compared with them? . . ." he asked encompassing with an inimical glance the company about them. "What is this band of shoemakers, tailors, paper hangers, barbers? . . . Comedians, ragamuffins, and clowns! . . . Bah! art is going to the dogs. In a few more years when we are gone, they will make of the stage a barroom, a circus, or a storage warehouse. "Do you hear? . . . they give me half-sheet roles of old men and old nincompoops, to me! . . . do you hear? . . . to me, who for forty years have upheld the entire classical repertory to me! Oh! oh!" he hissed quietly tearing his finger nails convulsively.