9 July.

To-day in the reading-room Kromitzki pointed out to me an Englishman accompanied by a very beautiful woman, and told me their story.  The beauty is a Roumanian by birth and married a Wallachian bankrupt Boyar, from whom the Englishman simply bought her at Ostend.  I have heard of similar transactions at least a dozen times.  Kromitzki even mentioned the sum the Englishman had given for her.  The story made a strange impression upon me.  I thought to myself, “This is one way, however disgraceful for the seller and buyer; it is a simple method of obtaining a desired result.  The woman concerned in it need not know anything about the transaction, and the agreement could be concealed under decent appearances.”  Involuntarily I began to apply the idea to our own situation.  Suppose it answered.  The whole thing presented itself to me under two aspects:  in regard to Aniela as a horrible profanation; in regard to Kromitzki, not only as feasible, but at the same time gratifying my scorn and hatred for him.  If he agreed to it, he would prove himself a villain, and show what kind of man he is, and what a monstrous thing has been done in giving Aniela to him.  I should then be quite justified in all my endeavors to take her from him.  But would he agree?  I said to myself:  “You hate him, and consequently believe him capable of any evil.”  But thinking of him objectively, I remembered that the man had sold his wife’s property, had deceived her and Pani Celina, and also that the ruling passion of his life was greed for gain.  It was not I alone who considered him as one wholly possessed by the gold fever.  Sniatynski thought the same, and so do my aunt and Pani Celina.  This kind of moral disease always leads into pitfalls.  I understand that much will depend upon the state of his affairs.  How they stand nobody seems to know, unless it be his agent Chwastowski.  It suddenly struck me that I might get some information from this same Chwastowski, but that would take some time.  Perhaps I will run over to Vienna and see his brother the doctor, who is working in the Vienna hospitals; the brothers are sure to correspond with each other.  My aunt thinks that he is not doing as well as he wants us to believe, and I imagine that he has sunk all his money in some speculation from which he expects a great profit.  Will he succeed?—­that is the question.  He himself does not know; hence his restlessness, and the multitude of letters he sends to young Chwastowski.  In the mean while I will sound him cautiously, lest I should rouse his suspicions, as to what he thinks of the Boyar who sold his wife to the Englishman.  I do not suppose for a moment that he will be quite sincere, but I will help him and guess the rest.  The whole sum and substance of this is, that it has put a little more life into me.  There is nothing more horrible than to suffer passively; and anything that rouses me from my apathy is acceptable.  I repeat to myself, “At least to-morrow and the day after, you will have something