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It does not matter whether this which I say here please any one or not, because I believe that I feel the great and urgent need of the human soul, which cries for a change. A Dramatic Picture in One Act. CHARACTERS: Jadwiga Karlowiecka. Leon A Painter. A Servant. In the House of Jadwiga Karlowiecka. Servant. The lady will be here in a minute.
Tell me once more that you love me that you consent to take me when I shall be free is it not so, Leon? Leon. No, madam! Jadwiga. Leon, my dearest, wait! Perhaps I have not heard well. For I cannot comprehend that when I am hanging over a precipice of despair, when I seize the edge with my hands, you, instead of helping me you place your feet on my fingers! No! it is impossible.
Jadwiga. If that is so, then I must tell you that such an agreement, based on mutual well-wishing, excludes excessive solemnity. We must be natural, sincere, and frank. Leon. Frankly speaking, it will be a little difficult, still. Jadwiga. It would be difficult if there were no condition: "Not a word about the past!"
Morbleu! as my husband says, and if the wife is weary? Leon. I bid you good-bye. Jadwiga. Why? Does what I say offend you? Leon. It does more than offend me. It hurts me. Maybe it will seem strange to you, but here in my breast I am carrying some flowers although they are withered dead for a long time. But they are dear to me and just now you are trampling on them.
Even the pious Jadwiga, as long as she lived, restrained her husband's anger against them. Anna Danuta alone, having experienced dreadful wrongs from the knights hated them with her whole soul. Therefore when the abbot asked her about Mazowsze and its affairs, she began to complain bitterly against the Order: "Our affairs are in a bad condition and it cannot be otherwise with such neighbors!
You have loved me, have you not? You have said it yourself. I have heard it. Now I stretch out my hands to you like a drowning person rescue me! Leon. We must finish this mutual torture. Madam, I am a weak man. I would give way if but I wish to spare you if not for the fact that my sore and dead heart cannot give you anything but tears and pity. Jadwiga. You do not love me! Leon.
God alone knows for how many nights I have cried to Him: "Lord, take my talent, take my fame, take my life, but return to me for only one moment my Jadwiga as she was of old!" Jadwiga. Enough! Lord, what is the matter with me? Leon, I love you! Leon. Oh, my dearest! Jadwiga. I have found you. I loved you always. Ah! how miserable I was without you!
Poor thing. Jadwiga. Do not smile in that ironical way. Be better, be less severe with me. I do not even have any one to complain, and that is why I do not drive away Count Skorzewski. I detest his beauty, I despise his perverse mind, but I do not drive him away because he is a skilful actor, and because when I see his acting it awakens in me the echo of former days. Study? Art?
In fact, as you see, I have grown old and changed greatly. Leon. At your age the words "I have grown old" are only a daring challenge thrown by a woman who is not afraid that she would be believed. Jadwiga. I am twenty-three years old, so I am not talking about age in years, but age in morals. I feel that to-day I am not like that Jadwiga of Kalinowice whom you used to know so well.
I think that the fancies of a society woman are indeed inexplicable, and do not look like jokes at all. Jadwiga. This question has two sides! The first is the formal side and it shows itself thus: Mme. Jadwiga Karlowiecka most earnestly asks the great painter Leon to make her portrait. That is all! The painter Leon, who, it is known, paints lots of portraits, has no good reason for refusing.
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