we talked together as if the last meeting at Cracow had never taken place.  I noticed, nevertheless, that he watched me furtively, and not being able to make me out tried indirect inquiry, with all the clumsiness of an author who is a deep psychologist and reader of the human mind at his desk, and as unsophisticated as any student in practical life.  As Hamlet of yore, I might have handed him a pipe and said, “Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?  Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.”

I had been reading Hamlet the night before, as I have read it many a time, and involuntarily these words came into my mind.  It seems to me surpassing strange that a man of my time, in whatever position or complicated trouble of soul, should find so much analogy to himself as I find in this drama, based upon Holinshed’s sanguinary and gross legend.  Hamlet is the human soul as it was, as it is, and as it will be.  In conceiving this drama, Shakspeare overstepped the limit fixed even for genius.  I can understand Homer and Dante, studied by the light of their epoch.  I can comprehend that they could do what they did; but how an Englishman of the seventeenth century could foreknow psychosis, a science of recent growth, will be to me, in spite of my study of Hamlet, an everlasting mystery.

Having mentally handed over to Sniatynski Hamlet’s pipe, I recommended to his care Miss Hilst, and then began to discuss his pet theories.  Upon his wanting to know what brought me back, I said it was the longing for the country, and consciousness of unfulfilled duties towards it.  I said it in a careless, off-hand way, and Sniatynski looked puzzled, not knowing whether I spoke seriously or mockingly.  And again the same phenomenon of which I spoke in Paris repeated itself here.  The moral ascendency he had gained over me gradually disappeared.  He did not know himself what to think, but he saw the old key would not serve any longer.  When he said good-by I again recommended to him Miss Hilst.  He looked at me keenly.

“Do you attach much importance to her success?”

“Yes, very much.  She is a person I hold in great esteem, and have much friendship for.”

In this way I centred all his attention on Miss Hilst.  Most likely he thought I had fallen in love with her.  He went away angry, and could not disguise his feelings.  He shut the door sharply; and when I accompanied him as far as the staircase, and turned back to the anteroom, I heard him descending the staircase, taking four steps at once, and whistling,—­which he always does when angry.  Besides, it was quite true, what I said about Miss Hilst.  I wrote to-day to Clara, explaining why I had not been to see her, and received a reply at once.  She is delighted with Warsaw, and especially its inhabitants.  All the musical world has called upon her, and they are vying with each other in politeness and offers of help.