oes not feel inclined to pay.

Soon after the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Davis my father began a
philosophical discussion, which, going from one question to another,
concluded with an analysis of human feelings. Mrs. Davis made
several very shrewd remarks. From the studio we went to the terrace
overlooking our gardens. It is only the tenth of March, and here
spring is at its best. This year everything is much advanced,--fierce
heat in the daytime, the magnolias covered with snow-white blossoms,
and the nights as warm as in July. What a different world from that of
Ploszow. I breathe here with all my lungs.

Mrs. Davis on the terrace with the moon shining upon her was
beautiful as a Greek dream. I saw she was under the influence of that
indescribable Roman night. Her voice was softer, even, and more mellow
than usual. Perhaps even now she only thinks of herself, is impressed
because it is herself who feels it, dresses herself in moonbeams,
restfulness, and magnolia scent as in a new shawl or bonnet. But all
the same the dress suits her splendidly. Were it not that my heart is
full of Aniela, I should fall under the spell of the picture. Besides
this, she said things which not many could have conceived.

All the same, whenever I am present at these _causeries Romaines_
I have always a feeling that my father, I, such as Mrs. Davis, and
generally speaking, all the people of the so-called upper classes do
not live a true, real life. Below us something is always going
on, something always happens; there is the struggle for life, for
bread,--a life full of diligent work, animal necessities, appetites,
passions, every-day efforts,--a palpable life, which roars, leaps, and
tumbles like ocean waves; and we are sitting eternally on terraces,
discussing art, literature, love, woman, strangers to that other
life far removed from it, obliterating, out of the seven, the six
work-days. Without being conscious of it, our inclinations,
nerves, and soul are fit only for holidays. Immersed into blissful
dilettantism as in a warm bath, we are half awake, half dreaming.
Consuming leisurely our wealth, and our inherited supply of nerves and
muscles, we gradually lose our foothold upon the soil. We are as the
down, carried away by the wind. Scarcely do we touch ground, when the
real life pushes us back, and we draw aside; for we have no power of
resistance.

When I think of it I see nothing but contradictions in us. We consider
ourselves the