Генрик Сенкевич - Whirlpools

"Slavonian, Lechite, Piast-come to my arms," drawled Dolhanski.

Ladislaus blushed a little from fear that the young Englishwoman and his refined female relatives might judge him too rustical, but they glanced at him with a certain sympathy. Only the beard of the old classical notary drooped with his nose in a manner boding no good, and from his lips he mumbled a half-distinct grumble:

"To some folks it is sufficient, when anything jingles in their ears."

But recollecting that it would not be agreeable to Pani Krzycki if caustic remarks were directed against her son, he cast an uneasy look at her and became silent.

The supper was finished. The company went to the salon in which prevailed coolness and the slight scent of jasmine blown in from the garden by the light evening breezes before the windows were closed. In the glass doors appeared the big full moon, which but recently arose slowly in the heaven, still ruddy after a bath in the evening twilight. Pani Otocka sat at the piano; beside her the notary began to blow, as if with anger, into the flute; while behind them stood Marynia with a violin at her shoulder. Gronski with rapture gazed at her luxuriant dark hair; her peaceful, arched eyebrows under a forehead plainly immaculate; her small countenance; her slender, growing, childlike form, and thought that this sight alone would suffice for music, or at least that such a violinist might pass for its incarnation and symbol. Ladislaus, although he had previously enlisted in the ranks of the English faction, could not remove his eyes from her. After completing his university education, he had accompanied his mother on a journey to Italy. He visited various galleries and, though he lacked solid artistic culture, nevertheless the thought crossed his mind that this maiden with the bright and peaceful countenance, bending over the violin, might have served the old masters as a model for Saint Cecilia or for one of those angelic violin-players which he had seen in the paintings of Fra Angelico.

The other listeners, like Pani Krzycki, her children, the instructress, and Miss Anney, gazed at her as if at a miracle-working image. Only one, Laskowicz, young Stas' tutor, did not share in the general rapture. He was a medical student who, owing to the closing of the university, was earning money by teaching for the further pursuit of his studies, and he found himself, together with his inexorable hatred for the "pampered" of this world, like Pilate in Credo, in this country home. His convictions by this time were not a secret to anybody in Jastrzeb; he was tolerated, however, with that improvident indulgence of which the Polish nobility is only capable, upon the principle that "the greatest radical must eat," and also in the hope that Stas was yet too young to be infected with the "evil spirit" by his tutor.

To Laskowicz, when he looked at the gentle young lady, it seemed that she was a flower which grew higher than the hands of a proletaire could reach; therefore she was bred to the injury of the proletariat. This was sufficient for him to look on both sides with reluctance and a readiness to hate.

But, in the meanwhile, the moment for beginning the concert had arrived. For some time Marynia had been drawing the bow over the chords, turning the ringlets of the violin, and passing her fingers over the notes, indicating something to her sister and the notary; afterwards silence ensued, interrupted only by the indistinct talk of the servants, assembled beyond the windows, who for the first time in their lives were to hear the young lady play on the violin.

The first chords of the moonlight sonata are sounded and a vision begins. Lo! a pale ray creeps stealthily through a crevice and touches the forehead of a sleeper, as if it wanted to arouse thought; afterwards the lips, as if it wished to waken words, and later the bosom, as if it desired to stir the heart. But the weary body slumbered in a heavy sleep. In its place the soul emerges from its embrace, like a butterfly from a cocoon, and flies into space. The night is bright and silent. Below, alders are dimly wrapped in muslin mists. On the sylvan meadows nymphs dance their rites, accompanied by the playing of a faun on a flute. About, stand with flaming azure eyes, stags, crowned with antlers. On the heath, glow-worms glimmer; on the moss, phosphorate toadstools, under whose canopies tiny elfs watch the gambols. From the decaying vegetation and fens rise Jack-o'-lanterns which flit about lightly and mysteriously, as if seeking something in vain. The moon ascends each moment higher and higher, and bounteous dew falls.

Over the vast fields rivers wind in silvery ribbons and tracks of the roadways can be seen leading to towns and castles. Through the narrow Gothic windows the moon's lustre invades silent castle-halls, where lurk the ghosts of dead knights and maidens. At the feet of the castles, cities slumber. In the calm light the roofs of houses whiten and crosses on the towers glitter. From the blossoming orchards, with the vapors rises the fragrance of flowers and grass. But lighter than the fragrance and the moonlight the winged soul soars higher and farther. The lowly habitations of men vanish; likewise vanish the forests, vales, sparkling shields of ponds, and the white threads of streams. Gradually lofty regions are attained.

And lo, the mountains! Amidst the crags sleeps the translucent buckler of the lake. In the chasms lies concealed cool dusk. The needles of the glaciers shine verdantly. On the declivities and rocky nests rest the weary clouds and mists; and on the peaks, on the eternal snow the moonlight reposes. Even the wind has fallen asleep. How still, ethereal, and immense! Here the moon is the only sentinel of silence and the human soul the only living entity. Free as a mountain eagle, detached from the flesh, enamoured with the expanse, desolation, and silence, happy, and sad with a supernal sorrow, dissolved in the stillness, she hovers and courses above the precipices; and again flies farther on, entirely abandoned to pleasure, flight, and speed.

And the mountains have already disappeared beneath her and lo! some voices rise and reach from below as if summoning her to them. It is the sea. It, alone, never sleeps; restless and vast, it dashes wave after wave against the shore, as if it were an immense pulsation of life. Its monstrous lungs heave and fall eternally and at times groan in complaint of endless toil.

The ruffled expanse of the sea throbs with the opalescent lunar lustre and the silvery laces of stars, and on those illuminated tracks, in the distance appears, wakeful as the sea itself, a ship with sails and a sanguinary light in the rounded windows.

But thou, oh soul, mountest higher and higher. Already the earth is left somewhere at the bottom of the abyss. Thou, light as down, dost pass feathery clouds, which have strayed upon the heights and dost pierce space flooded with splendor-empty and cool. There thou liest upon thine own wings and floatest about in luminous nothingness; higher and higher; and now doth scintillate and change color over thee, in gold and purple, the jewels of heaven, and thou dost frolic and swing in the unattainable ether, serene, freed from the dross of matter as if, beyond the limits of time and space, thou wert already partly admitted into heaven.

The firmament of heaven grows each moment darker, but the moon, great as the world, shines more and more brightly. Already we behold her glistening plains, mangled, wild, studded by mountain peaks, perforated with the blackness of craters, bleak, frosty, and lifeless. Thus in the abyss of space appears this silvery, corpse-like wanderer, who speeds around the earth as if condemned by a divine command to a perpetual race. Above and about her, an immensity which the swooning brain is incapable of comprehending. A new galaxy of stars twinkle sanguinarily and powerfully, like distant fire-places. The music of spheres is heard. Here Eternity fans with her breath and a supernal chill prevails.