第582页 / 共788页

"The Horeszkos refuse a wench to a Soplica! They serve me, Jacek,

with black soup!

"Finally, not knowing myself what way to turn, I bethought me of

gathering together a little company of gentry, and of leaving

forever this district and my Fatherland; of going off somewhere

or other, to Moscow or to the land of the Tatars, and beginning a

war. I rode over to bid the Pantler farewell, in the hope that

when he saw his faithful partisan, his former friend, a man

almost of his own household, with whom he had caroused and made

war for so many long years, now bidding him farewell and riding

off to the ends of the earth-that the old man might be moved and

show me at least a trace of a human soul, as a snail shows its

horns!