I heard about him."

"Is it possible that you have never heard anything about Cabinski,
nor read about the Tivoli?" asked Janina greatly surprised that
there could be anyone in Warsaw who did not know and was not
interested in the theater.

"I do not go to the theater at all and I do not read the papers," he
answered.

"Impossible!"

"One can see right away that you must not be more than twenty years
old, for you cry out in amazement, 'Impossible!' and look at me as
though I were a lunatic or a barbarian."

"But after talking with you, it was impossible for me to assume even
for a moment that . . ."

"That I am not interested in the theater, yes, that I do not read
the papers," he concluded for her.

"I can't even understand why."

"Well, because that does not interest me at all," he answered
simply.

"Are you not at all interested in what is going on in the world, in
how people are living, what they are doing, what they are thinking?"

"No. To you that doubtless appears monstrous; nevertheless it is
entirely natural. Do our peasants interest themselves in the theater
or in world affairs? They do not. Isn't that true?"

"Yes, but they are peasants and that is entirely different."

"It is the same thing, merely with this addition; that for them your
famous and great men do not exist at all and it doesn't make the
slightest difference to them whether Newton or Shakespeare ever
lived or not. And they are just as well off with their ignorance,
just as well."

Janina became silent, for what he had said appeared to her
paradoxical and not very true.

"What will I learn from your newspapers and your theaters? Merely
that people love, hate, and fight one another the same as ever; that
evil and brute force continue to reign as they always have done;
that the world and life are merely a big mill in which brains and
consciences are ground to dust. It is more comfortable to know
nothing rather than that," he continued.

"But is it right for anyone to seclude himself so egoistically from
all that is going on in the world?" asked Janina.

"Precisely in that lies wisdom. To desire nothing for ourselves,
care for nothing, and be indifferent that is what we ought to aim
at."

"Is it possible to attain such a state of complete apathy?"

"It is attained through the experience of life and through thinking.
Remember that the smallest pleasure, a mere momentary satisfaction,
always costs us more dearly than it is r