A 1876 novella focussing on the love triangle of Henryk, a Polish noble, his friend Selim, a Muslim fellow-student and Hania, the orphaned granddaughter of Mikolai who, on his death bed, makes Henryk Hania's guardian. Hopelessly in love with her (it parallels in it cloying details the obsessive loves of Vinicius in Quo Vadis and Plozkowski in Without Dogma), Henryk comes to realize that his best friend and his idealized love have feelings for one another. When Selim asks him straight out if he loves Hania and offers to not pursue her if this is the case, Henryk's pride forces him to reply - falsely - in the negative. Then, he is tortured as he sees their love develop. Eventually, his father becomes aware of the tension existing between the threesome and determines to send Hania away. Henryk announces to Selim that he has acted dishonourably and that, as a Muslim, he cannot even think of marrying the Christian Hania. Despite Selim's protestation that he'll change his faith, Henryk confronts him with the fact that he will never see her again, as she is about to depart. Not to be bested, and defying a torrential storm, Selim escapes with Hania. Pursuit by Henryk is only curtailed when Selim shoots out his rival's horse from underneath him. Making his way to a neighbouring noble's house, Henryk confesses the whole story. The nobel, Ustryski, sends Henryk home and goes to Selim's estate, only to find that Selim's father has locked him in a barn and sent Hania - soaked in her thin wet dress, back to Henryk's father's estate. The next morning, Henryk and Selim fight a duel with swords in which both are injured. Delirous and weak, Henryk takes sometime to recover, but wile doings so, he discovers that the chills she encountered that evening led to Hania catching the smallpox which had then been current in the neighbouring villages. Horribly disfigured, Henryk realizes that he cannot love her the way he used to, and though he tells his father that he will honor and keep her, nothing comes of this. Similarly, when confronted with her disfigured features, it is apparent that Selim's feelings have fundamentally altered . Hania becomes a nun. Several years later, Henryk sees her: there are no signs of the ravages of the disease, but her beauty now is an other-worldly one of those who have given their lives to God. The novella closes quite abruptly, almost as if Sienkiewicz grew tired of his characters, realized the basic paucity of his plot and decided to wrap it all up as quickly and expeditiously as he could.
Also included in this volume is the 30 page story In Tartar Captivity, which describes the steafdast refusal of the unnamed first person narrator to abandon his faith while held by the 'unclean dogs' (Tartars) who captured him. As he claims,"only two thins are lasting, the immortal soul and honor". Ransomed by the woman he loves, he goes off again to war, and presumably perished without having married his intended. Only in the postscript is his name - Alexis Zdonoborski - and eventual fate revealed.
Also included in this volume is the 25 pp. story Let Us Follow Him which, from the perspective of the dying wife of a Roman in Alexandria, describes the crucifixion of Christ. Pilate is depressed at having to do this since the mob demands it, the dying woman is overwhelmed by the spectacle of the Nazarene's sacrifice, based on his doctrine of love and his knowledge of the resurrection and the Jews who clamor 'Crucify him!' are depicted as mean, cruel, selfish beings consumed with hatred simply because of the Savior's belief that love is all powerful.
The 3 page story "Be Thou Blessed" tells how the God Krishna transformed the lotus flower into a maiden who learned how to love. The 15 pp. "At the Source" tells ofa young man's rejected offer of love and his imaginative response to it, induced by typhoid fever.
The story "Charcoal Sketches" at a little over 50 pp. in length, could well have been developed into a novel, since it has a finely drawn panoply of characters in a small rural village, replete with their various strengths of character (Repa is strong as an ox), foibles (the secretary is a hopeless romantic as well as a chiselling thief) and weaknesses (the nobility as a group feel it beneath their station to interest themselves in the lives of the peasants). While abundant humorous vignettes populate the first several chapters, the final ones are uniformly bleak and sombre. Masterfully constructed, if a bit on the heavy side with its pathos.
The 6 page The Organist of Ponilka tells the story of a young man who has just signed a contract to be the town organist, which will allow him to marry his true love with her father's consent. That is, if he manages to make it home through the snowladen meadows. The 8 page Lux in Tenebris Lucat tells of the last days of an old, sick artist whose wife died twenty years previously and who is overcome with sadness at the unremitting rain and mist outside his poor studio.
The 53 pp. On the Bright Shore tells of an artist, Sverski. He is initially attracted to a duplicitous widow, Pani Elzen but, in large part due to her involvement in and reaction to the suicide of her son's tutor, he learns to see through her falsehoods to her 'hidden animal selfishness in which all moral sense ended exactly where personal interest began'. Instead, he becomes enamoured of a poor girl of part Polish extraction, Maria Cervi, whose 'pure nature and honorable traditions ... keep [her] spirit from evil.' Except for its too abrupt termination, a very well written tale.
The 45pp. That Third Woman is a delightful tale of roubles, loves, artists, stuffed shirt fathers-in-law, beauty, actresses and newspapers. Thoroughly delightful and fun, much more lighthearted than most of Sienkiewicz's writings. From the bizarre manner in which Antek and Vladek keep their landlord from demanding the rent, the story never really asubsizes into any prolonged form of seriousness. The scene of his betrothal ceremony and Antek's hair is priceless, as is Vladek's bemusement with how Kazia managed to rule his successor's forelocks. Great stuff.