After Christmas, Kossakowska and her husband go and pay visits to the neighbors. In doing so, they also carry out their mission to transfer the Puritans jammed into their barns to Wojs?awice, and to send those who won’t fit around to the estates of various nobles. Agnieszka goes along with a bag full of tinctures—since Mr. Kossakowski has been complaining of pain in his bones—and their writing chest, with everything they need to write their letters, and two fur-lined cloaks. The dictation of letters takes place in the carriage; Agnieszka commits the letters to memory, then writes them down when they come to a stop. Kossakowska thinks of those under her care as “converts,” but she tries not to use this word in writing or in speech, since it carries negative associations. It is better to call them “Puritans,” a word that came from France or maybe England and that His Lordship ?ab?cki has just reminded her of, and now everyone is using it. It has good associations, containing the suggestion, pleasing to the ear, that they are pure.
She is taking a lovely gift: a doll. The doll is dressed exquisitely, like the ladies at the imperial court. She has flaxen hair curled into ringlets and topped with a shapely little lace cap. Kossakowska has taken her out of her box in the carriage—the snow has melted, and they have put away the sleighs—and is now holding her on her lap as though she were a child, twittering to it as adults do when bending down over a child. This is all to entertain her husband. But he is in a bad mood today in spite of this, annoyed that his wife is dragging him around to see the neighbors. His bones hurt—he has long suffered from arthritis. He would gladly stay at home and let the dogs come inside, which his wife has strictly forbidden. It’s a long way to Rohatyn, and he doesn’t care for ?ab?cki, he’s too learned for the castellan’s tastes and too intent upon pretending he is French. Kossakowski, on the other hand, is dressed in the Polish fashion, in a woolen kontusz and a fur.
The little girl at the ?ab?ckis’ is named Salomea. For now she keeps quiet—so far she has not uttered a single word, although she has a Polish governess who tries to help her. What she likes to do is just sit and embroider. She has been taught to curtsy and to lower her eyes when her elders are addressing her. She wears a pink dress with a magenta ribbon in her black hair. She is tiny and extremely lovely. Mrs. ?ab?cka says she never smiles. Which is why they watch her so closely when they give her the doll. After a moment’s hesitation, she sticks out her hand for it, then draws it in tight to her chest, pressing her face into the doll’s flaxen hair. Mr. ?ab?cki looks at her with a kind of pride, then quickly forgets about her. The girl takes her doll and vanishes like a dust ball.
At the sumptuous lunch that turns imperceptibly into dinner and falls only a little short of rolling on into breakfast, Father Chmielowski, the vicar forane, turns up. Kossakowska greets him warmly but also seems not to recognize the poor man, which saddens him visibly.
“From Rohatyn—I saved your life when you were ailing,” the priest states humbly, while ?ab?cki shouts over him that he’s a famous writer.
“Ahh,” Kossakowska remembers, “this is that brave and gallant priest who fished me out of the crowd when I was stuck in that half-brokendown carriage and brought me in here, to this refuge of yours! The author of New Athens, which I have read from cover to cover.” She slaps the priest’s back relentlessly and tells him to sit down next to her. He blushes and initially declines—this woman, with her masculine behavior, frightens him—but in the end he does sit next to her, and slowly his courage returns with the help of the Tokay. His health has declined, he’s gotten skinnier and weaker, and his teeth must have decayed, for he struggles with the chicken placed before him, although he eats the boiled vegetables and the soft patés of wild game, dishing more and more of them onto his plate. From the white rolls, he selects the soft center, assembling the harder outsides carefully in a little pile and furtively passing them under the table to the ?ab?ckis’ shaggy dog, who—very much like his mother—inspires great affection in the priest. He’s happy he managed to house this dog with such a fine family. And he even feels a little bit like he is part of the ?ab?cki family now, as well.
“I hear, Father, that you’ve just returned from Warsaw,” Kossakowska says to him.
Father Chmielowski blushes slightly, which makes his face seem younger.
“The wonderfully erudite Bishop Za?uski had been inviting me to go for quite some time, and if he knew, of course, that I was sitting now with Your Benevolent Ladyship, he would no doubt have sent his very fondest regards from Warsaw, for he spoke of you in only the most glowing terms.”
“Like everyone else,” interjects ?ab?cki, a slight irony in his tone.
Father Chmielowski continues:
“Warsaw itself didn’t interest me, just that library. A city is a city, anyone can see what it is. It is the same wherever you go—the roofs are the same, the churches, and people all look alike. It’s a bit like Lwów, just with more empty squares, which makes the wind all the more vexing. I was taken there by that vast collection, and as I am already considerably weakened, and I have little health left . . .” Here Father Chmielowski falters, reaches for his wine, and takes a big gulp. “On account of that library of theirs I was unable to sleep, and I still cannot . . . What an enormity . . . Tens of thousands—they themselves do not even know how many volumes . . .”
Father Chmielowski had stayed in a monastery, and every day he’d walked quite a bit in that freezing air to get to the library, where he was permitted to poke around in the stacks. He had intended to make notes, for he has not yet completed his work, but that multitude of books had an unexpectedly depressing effect on him. Father Chmielowski actually spent all that time—almost an entire month—going into the library to try to understand what organization prevailed there. But with everincreasing anxiety, he became convinced that there was no organization to it at all.
“Some books are sorted by author, but then suddenly it changes and is according to the ‘abecedary,’ alphabetically. And then there are books that were purchased together just piled up, and then there are some that on account of their larger format would not fit onto the usual shelves, and so they have been separated onto other, more capacious shelves, or they lie around as if ailing in some way,” Father Chmielowski says indignantly. “But books are like soldiers. They should always be standing at attention, one after the next. Like an army of mankind’s wisdom.”