"If that is the case, I will go," answered Swidwicki, "but you had better come with me into another room for I have some business with you which I prefer to discuss without witnesses." And, taking leave of Ladislaus, he stepped out. Gronski accompanied him to the ante-room and after a while returned, shrugging his shoulders: "What a strange gentleman," said Ladislaus. "I hope I am not indiscreet, but did he want to borrow any money from you?" "Worse," answered Gronski. "This time it was a few Falk engravings. I positively refused as he most frequently returns money or rather he lets you take it out of his annuity, but books, engravings, and such things he never gives back." "Is he making a collection?" "On the contrary he throws or gives them away; loans or destroys them. Do I know? You will now have an opportunity of meeting him oftener, for though I refused to loan them, I permitted him to come here to look over and study them. He undoubtedly is writing a book about Falk." "Ah, so he is a literary man." "He might have been one. As you will meet him, I must warn you a little against him. I will describe him briefly. He is a man to whom the Lord gave a good name, a large estate, good looks, great ability, and a good heart, and he has succeeded in wasting them all." "Even a good heart?" "Inasmuch as he is a rather pernicious person, it is better that he does not write. For you see that it may happen that somebody's brains decay, just as with people, sick with consumption, their lungs decay. But no one has the right to feed the nation with the putrefaction of his lungs or his brains. And there are many like him. He does not act for the public weal but merely for his own private affairs. Do you know how he accounts for not accomplishing anything in his life? In this way: that to do so one must believe and to believe it is necessary to have a certain amount of stupidity which he does not possess. I am not speaking now of religious matters. He simply does not believe that anything can be true or false, just or unjust, good or bad. But Balzac wisely says: 'Qui dit doute, dit impuissance.' Swidwicki is irritated and filled with bitterness by the fact that he is not anything; therefore he saves himself by paradoxes and turns intellectual somersaults. I once saw a clown who amused the public by giving his cap various strange and ridiculous shapes. Swidwicki does the same with truth and logic. He is also a clown, but an embittered and spiteful one. For this reason he always holds an opinion opposite to that of the person with whom he is speaking. This happens particularly when he is drunk, and he gets drunk every night. Then to a patriot he will say that fatherland is folly; in the presence of a believer he will scoff at faith; to a conservative he will say that only anarchy and revolution are worth anything; to the socialist that the proletariat have 'snouts.' I have heard how he thus expressed himself, and only for