at nature and to forget."

"Forget about what?"

"About life!" Janina whispered hoarsely and tears of violent grief
filled her eyes.

"You are a child. It must have been some disappointment in love,
some thwarted ambition, or perhaps the lack of a dinner that put you
in such a tragic mood."

"All that taken together is not enough to make one feel very, very
unhappy," answered Janina.

"All that taken together is one big zero, for according to my way of
thinking there is nothing that can make wholly unhappy an individual
who knows himself," he said.

"Who are you . . . that is, what do you do?" he asked, after pausing
a while.

"I am in the theater," answered the girl.

"Aha! the world of comedy! Simulation which you afterwards take for
reality. Chimeras! All that warps the human soul. The greatest
actors are merely phonographs wound up sometimes by sages, sometimes
by geniuses, but most often by fools. And they speak to even greater
fools. Actors, artists, creators are merely blind instruments of
nature which uses them to reveal itself and for ends known to itself
alone! To them it seems that they are something real, but that is a
sad deception, for they are merely instruments which are thrown into
the discard when they are no longer needed or have lost their
usefulness."

"Who are you?" Janina asked, almost unknowingly, stirred by his
words.

"An old man as you see, who fishes and likes to chat. Oh yes, I am
very old. I come here for a few hours every day in the summertime,
if the weather is fair, and catch fish, if they let themselves be
caught. What good will it do you to know who I am? My name will tell
you nothing. In the sum total of humanity I am merely a pawn which
is given a certain number upon entrance into this world and retains
the same at the time of its exit. I am a cell of feeling long ago
registered and classified by my fellow-beings as a 'ne'er-do-well,'"
he said, smiling.

"I had no intention of offending you by my question."

"I never get angry about anything. Only foolish people anger
themselves or rejoice. A man ought merely to look on, observe, and
go his own way," he added, drawing a gudgeon from his hook.

Janina was a bit chilled by his gravity and by his decisive way of
speaking which admitted of no discussion.

"Are you from the Warsaw Theater?" he asked, throwing out his line
again.

"No, I am in Cabinski's company. No doubt you know him."

"I don't know him, nor have