only once a week, it would give rise to so much gossip, twaddle,
surmises."

"Oh I don't care what people say about me!" Janina laughed with an
easy air.

"Ho! ho! I see you are of the fighting variety . . . a regular
gamecock! I like a person who treats with scant ceremony that old
rag called public opinion."

"I think that as long as I have nothing to reproach myself with, I
can listen calmly to what they say about me."

"Pride, a capital pride!"

"Why don't you bring out your play in the Warsaw Theater?"

"Because they did not want to produce it. That, you see, is a very
elegant and highly perfumed establishment and only for a very
delicate and subtly feeling public, while my play does not smell a
bit of the salon; at the most, it smells of the fields, a little of
the woods and a trifle of the peasant's hut. There they want, not
truth, but flirtation, conventionality bluffing, etc., count up to
twenty. Moreover, I had no backing, and they already have their
patented play manufacturers."

"I thought it was only necessary to write something good and they
would immediately produce it."

"Great Scott! No! . . . quite the reverse is true. Just look how
much I must bear before even such as Cabinski presents my
play! . . . Now raise that to the fourth power and only then will
you have some conception of the joys of a beginning comedy writer,
who, in addition, does not know how to secure patronage for his
plays."

They became silent. The rain fell incessantly and was already
forming big puddles of water along the road. Glogowski gazed
gloomily at the city whose towers appeared outlined upon the misty
horizon.

"A base city!" he grumbled angrily. "For three years I have vainly
been trying to conquer it. I am struggling and killing myself, and
yet, not even a dog knows me."

"If you keep on telling them that they are base knaves and fools you
will never conquer them."

"I will. They will not love me, to be sure, but they will have to
reckon with me, they must! However, such citadels are most easily
stormed by actors, singers, and dancers. They make a clean sweep of
everything with only one appearance."

"But their triumph is only for a day. After they have left the stage
all trace of them is lost like that of a stone cast into the water!"
said Janina with a certain bitterness, gazing fixedly at the ever
nearer appearing, crowded walls of Warsaw. Only at that moment did
she realize that the fame of which sh