d; I was ready once more to fall at
her father's feet, to cling like a serpent about his knees, to cry out,
'Dear father, take me for your son or slay me!' Then the Pantler, sullen,
cold as a pillar of salt, polite and indifferent, began a discourse--of
what? of what? Of his daughter's wedding! At that moment? O Gerwazy, dear
friend, consider; you have a human heart!

"The Pantler said: 'Pan Soplica, a wooer has just come to me on behalf of
the Castellan's175 son; you are my friend, what do you say to that? You
know, sir, that I have a daughter, fair and rich--and the Castellan of
Witepsk! That is a low, parvenu seat in the Senate; what do you advise me,
brother?' I have entirely forgotten what I said in reply to that, probably
nothing at all--I mounted my horse and fled!"

* * * * * * * *

"Jacek!" cried the Warden, "you are clever at finding excuses! Well? They
do not lessen your guilt! For it has happened many a time ere now that a
man has fallen in love with the daughter of a lord or king, and has tried
to capture her by force; has planned to steal her away or to avenge
himself openly--but so stealthily to kill him! a Polish lord, in Poland,
and in league with the Muscovites!"

"I was not in league with them," answered Jacek in a voice full of sorrow.
"Seize her by force? I might have; from behind gratings and locks I would
have snatched her; I would have shattered this castle of his into dust! I
had behind me Dobrzyn and four other hamlets. Ah, would that she had been
such as our plain gentlewomen, strong and vigorous! Would that she had not
dreaded flight and the pursuit and could have borne the sound of clashing
arms! But the poor child! Her parents had shielded her so carefully that
she was frail and timid! She was but a little spring caterpillar--the larva
of a butterfly! And to snatch her thus, to touch her with an armed hand,
would have been to kill her. I could not! No!

"To avenge myself openly, and tumble the castle into ruins by an assault,
I was ashamed, for they would have said that I was avenging myself for my
rejection! Warden, your honest heart cannot feel what hell there is in
wounded pride.

"The demon of pride began to suggest to me better plans: to take a bloody
revenge, but to hide the reason for my vengeance; to frequent the castle
no more and to root out my love from my heart; to dismiss Eva from my
memory and to marry another; and then later to find some pret