“My dear fellow, as to business I flatter myself that I know a great deal more about it than you; but as to arguments, I confess that you would soon drive me into a corner.  If you had not inherited millions from your father, you would be able to amass a fortune as a barrister.  You have put the whole thing in such a light that I do not know what to think of that Roumanian chap.  All I know about it is that some kind of transaction about his wife had occurred, and that, put it in whatever light you will, is always a disreputable thing.  Besides, as I am somewhat of a merchant myself, I will tell you another thing:  a bankrupt can always find a way out of his difficulties:  he either makes another fortune and then pays his debts, or he blows out his brains and pays with his life; and at the same time, if he is married, he sets his wife free and gives her another chance.”

I fumed and raged inwardly, and would have given anything if I could have shouted out to him:  “You are a bankrupt already in one thing, for your wife does not love you.  You see the Cascades; jump in, set her free, and give her the chance of some happiness.”  But I remained silent, chewing the bitter cud of my reflections.  Kromitzki, however commonplace he might be, though capable of selling Gluchow and taking advantage of his wife’s trust in him, was not the villain I took him for.  It was a disappointment and destroyed the plan to which for the moment I had clung as to a plank of safety.  Again I felt powerless, and saw looming up before me the vast solitude.  Nevertheless, I held fast to that purpose because I understood that unless I could do something, I should go mad.  “It will at least prepare the ground for anything that may turn up, and accustom Kromitzki to the thought of parting with Aniela,” I said to myself.  As I said before, nobody knows in what state Kromitzki’s affairs are, but I suppose that a man who speculates is liable to losses as well as to gains.  I said to him:—­

“I do not know whether your principles are, strictly speaking, business principles, but at any rate they are the sentiments of an honorable man, and I respect you for them.  You said, if I understood you, that a man has no right to drag his wife with him into poverty.”

“No, I did not say that; I only said that to sell one’s wife is a villany; the wife ought to share her husband’s fate.  I think but little of a fair-weather wife, who wants to break her marriage vows because her husband cannot give her the comforts of life.”

“Suppose she did not agree, he might set her free against her will.  Besides, if she knew that by submitting to a divorce, she could save her husband, duty well understood would bid her to yield.”

“It is unpleasant even to talk about such things.”

“Why? are you sorry for the Boyar?”

“Not I; I shall always hold him for a blackguard.”

“Because you do not look at things from an objective point of view.  But that is not astonishing.  A man like you, with whom everything is prospering, cannot enter into the psychology of a bankrupt unless he be a philosopher; and philosophy has nothing to do with making millions.”