ng the rounds; the musicians were already tuning their
instruments and summoning people to dance. They looked for Thaddeus, who
was standing some distance away and whispering something of pressing
moment to his future wife:--

"Sophia, I must take counsel with you in a very important matter; I have
already asked my uncle's opinion, and he is not opposed. You know that a
considerable portion of the villages that I am to be the owner of,
according to the law ought to have descended to you. These serfs are not
my subjects, but yours; I should not venture to dispose of their affairs
without the consent of their lady. Now, when we ourselves possess once
more our beloved Fatherland, shall the peasants by that happy change gain
only this much, that they receive another lord? To be sure, they have
hitherto been governed with kindness, but after my death God knows to whom
I may leave them; I am a soldier, and we both are mortal; I am a man, and
I fear my own caprices: I shall act with greater security if I renounce my
own authority and give over the fate of the villagers into the protection
of the law. Being free ourselves, let us make the villagers free likewise;
let us grant them as their own the possession of the land on which they
were born, which they have gained by bloody toil, and from which they
nourish us all and make us all rich. But I must warn you that the grant of
these lands will lessen our income; we must live in moderate
circumstances. I from my youth am wonted to a frugal life; but you,
Sophia, spring from a mighty line, and have passed your early years in the
capital--will you consent to live in a village, far from the great world,
like a country girl?"

In reply Zosia said modestly,--

"I am a woman, authority does not belong to me. You will be my husband; I
am too young to give advice--whatever you arrange, I agree to with all my
heart! If by freeing the villagers you become poorer, then, Thaddeus, you
will be all the dearer to my heart. Of my family I know little, and to it
I am quite indifferent; I remember only that I was poor and an orphan, and
that I was taken in as a daughter by the Soplicas, that I was brought up
in their house and married from it. Of the country I am not afraid: if I
have lived in a great city, that was long ago; I have forgotten it, and
have always loved the country. Believe me, that my hens and roosters have
given me more amusement than all those St. Petersburgs, If at times I have