Gronski knit his brows and began to sharply eye Swidwicki; after which, he said: "Miss Anney's servant asked me this morning about your residence. Tell me, what does that mean?" Swidwicki again drank the wine. "Ah, she also called--she was there. Pani Otocka sent through her an invitation." "Pani Otocka sent you an invitation through Pauly. Tell that to some one else." "About what are you concerned?" asked Swidwicki, with jovial effrontery. "She ordered her to send the invitation through a messenger but the messengers since last night are on a strike. Now everybody strikes. Girls also,--with the exception of the 'female associates,' particularly the old and ugly ones. These, if they strike, then sans le vouloir." The reply appeared to Gronski to be satisfactory, as in reality messengers had been absent from the streets since the previous day. Then Swidwicki turned the conversation into another direction. "I received him," he said, "not to save an ass, but because I am bored and it just suited me. Some wise Italian once said that the divinity which holds everything in this world in restraint is called la paura,--fear; and the Italian was right. If the people did not fear, nothing would remain--not a single social form of life! On this ladder of fear there are numerous rounds and the highest is the fear of death. Death! That is a real divinity! Reges rego, leges lego, judice judico! And I confess that I, whose life has been passed in toppling from pedestals various divinities, had the most difficulty in overcoming this divinity. But I overcame it and so completely that I made it my dog." "What did you do?" "A dog, which as often as it pleases me, I stroke over the hair, as for instance now, when I received that revolutionary booby. But that is yet nothing! See under what terror people live: the executioner's axe, the gallows, the bullet, cancer, consumption, typhoid fever, tabes--suffering, pain, whole months and years of torture--and why? Before the fear of death. And I jeer at that. Me, hangman will not execute, cancer will not gnaw, consumption will not consume, pain will not break, torture will not debase, for I shout, in a given moment, at this divinity before which all tremble, as at a spaniel: 'Lie down!'" After which he laughed and said: "And that mad booby of mine, however, hid himself as if before death. Tell me what would happen if people actually did not fear?" "They would not be themselves," answered Gronski. "They desire life, not death." XI