k!
Ah, Major Plut! He has played sad tricks to-day. He will answer for them
to the Tsar, for he was in command. I will be your friend, Chamberlain.
There is a Russian proverb, Chamberlain, 'Who loves well, shoves well!'
You are good at a bottle and good at a battle--but stop playing your rough
jokes on my yagers."

Hearing this, the Chamberlain raised his sabre and, through the Apparitor,
proclaimed a general pardon; he gave orders to tend the wounded, to clear
the field of troops, and to disarm and imprison the yagers. They searched
long for Plut; he had buried himself deep in a nettle bush and lay there
as if dead; at last he came out when he saw that the battle was over.

Thus ended the last foray in Lithuania.165

BOOK X--THE EMIGRATION. JACEK

ARGUMENT

Consultation in regard to securing the fortunes of the
victors--Negotiations with Rykov--The farewell--An important
discovery--Hope.

The morning clouds, dispersed for a moment, like black birds, kept
gathering and flying towards the summit of the heavens; hardly had the sun
declined from noon when their flock had covered half the sky with an
immense mantle; the wind drove it on faster and faster, the cloud grew
more and more dense and hung lower and lower: finally, half torn away from
the sky on one side, bending towards the earth, and spread out far and
wide like a great sail, it gathered into itself all the winds and flew
over the sky from the south to the west.

There was an instant of calm, and the air became dull and silent, as if
dumb with terror. And the fields of grain, which just before, bowing to
the earth and again shaking their golden ears on high, had tossed like
waves, now stood motionless and gazed at the sky with bristling stalks.
And the green willows and poplars by the roadside, which, like mourners by
an open grave, had been bowing their heads to the earth, and brandishing
their long arms, with their silver tresses spread out on the winds, now
stood as if dead, with an expression of dumb grief like the statue of
Niobe on Sipylos. Only the trembling aspen shook its grey leaves.

The cattle, usually loath to return homeward, now rushed together, and,
without waiting for their keepers, deserted their pasturage and ran
towards the barn. The bull dug up the ground with his hoof and ploughed it
with his horns, frightening all the herd with his ill-omened