it your confounded nonsense!" cried the irritated
Topolski, drinking one glass of brandy after another. "That kind of
company any idiot can organize, any Cabinski. I don't want a band of
players who will scatter to the four winds as soon as someone lures
them with the promise of a big advance, but a strong organization
with a well-defined plan, an organization as solid as a stonewall!"

"You often broke up companies yourself and yet you think you can
manage actors? . . ." persisted Wawrzecki.

"I am sure of it. Listen all! This is how I would go about it:
condition one--about five thousand rubles to begin with; I fish out
of all the companies their best forces, thirty persons at most; I
pay them moderately but honestly; I assure dividends . . ." "Come
now, you had better give up dreaming about dividends!" growled
Kotlicki.

"There will be a dividend! there must be!" cried Topolski with
growing enthusiasm. "I select my plays: a series of typical and
classical things; these will be the walls and foundations of my
edifice; furthermore, all the more important novelties and all the
folkplays, but away with operetta, away with clownishness, away with
the circus, away with everything that is not true art! I want to
have a theater and not a puppet show! artists are not clowns!" he
cried in an ever louder voice.

Topolski began to cough so violently that all the veins in his neck
swelled like whipcords. He coughed for a long time, then took a
drink of brandy and began talking again, but in a quieter and slower
voice, without looking at anyone, or seeing anything beyond this
dream of his whole life, which he related in short and tangled
sentences.

Kotlicki, who was not stirred even for a moment by that speech full
of inspiration as well as illogicality, remarked: "You are a little
late. Antoine in Paris has long ago put into practice what you
propose; those are his ideas . . ."

"No, those are my ideas, my dreams; for twenty years already I am
carrying them within me!" cried Topolski, growing suddenly livid as
though struck by lightning, and gazing in a dazed way at Kotlicki.

"What of that, when others have already partially realized those
dreams and given them their name . . ."

"Thieves! they have stolen my idea! they have stolen my idea!"
shouted Topolski and fell over half-senseless on the grass, covering
his face with his hands, sobbing convulsively and stammering in a
drunken voice: "They have stolen my idea!