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I remember that in my time there lived two neighbours, both worthy gentlemen, and of long descent; they dwelt on opposite sides of the river Wilejka; one was named Domejko and the other Dowejko.86 They both shot at the same time at a she-bear; which killed it it was hard to ascertain, and they had a terrible quarrel, and swore to shoot at each other over the hide of the bear: that was in true gentleman’s style, almost barrel to barrel.
I stationed Dowejko at the tail of the beast on one side, and Domejko on the other side. ‘Now blaze away,’ I said, ‘for all your lives if you choose, but I won’t let you go until you are friends again.’ They got furious, but then the gentry present fairly rolled on the ground for laughter; and the priest and I with impressive words set to giving them lessons from the Gospel and from the Statutes.
The Seneschal was riding in the middle; the worthy old man was merry beyond his wont and very talkative. Wishing to amuse the quarrelsome hunters and to bring them to an agreement, for their benefit he concluded his story of Dowejko and Domejko:— “Assessor, if I wanted you to fight a duel with the Notary, don’t think that I thirst for human blood; God forbid!
I wanted to amuse you, I wanted, so to speak, to arrange a comedy for you, to renew a conceit that I invented forty years ago, a splendid one! You are younger men, and do not remember about it, but in my time it was famous from this forest to the woods of Polesie. “All the animosities of Domejko and Dowejko proceeded, strange to say, from the very unfortunate similarity of their names.
For when, at the time of the district diets,89 the friends of Dowejko were recruiting partisans, some one would whisper to a gentleman, ‘Give your vote to Dowejko’; but he, not hearing quite correctly, would give his vote to Domejko.
“That was not the worst: once a certain drunken squire had a sword fight in Wilno with Domejko and received two wounds; later that squire, returning home from Wilno, by a strange chance took the same boat as Dowejko.
There was no help for it; they laughed and had to be reconciled. “Their quarrel turned later into a lifelong friendship, and Dowejko married the sister of Domejko; Domejko espoused the sister of his brother-in-law, Panna Dowejko: they divided their property into two equal portions, and on the spot where so strange an occurrence had happened they built a tavern, and called it the Little Bear.”
So, when they were journeying along the Wilejka in the same boat, and he asked his neighbour who he was, the reply was ‘Dowejko.’ Without further ado he drew his blade from under his winter coat; slash, slash, and on Domejko’s account he cut off the mustache of Dowejko. “Finally, as the last straw, it must needs be that on a hunting party things happened thus.
Once when, at a banquet, the Marshal Rupejko proposed a toast, ‘Vivat Dowejko,’ others shouted ‘Domejko’; and the guests sitting in the middle did not know what to do, especially considering one’s indistinct speech at dinner time.
So I thought that over attentively by night. “Hardly was day dawning, when from one side came Dowejko in a gig, and from the other Domejko on horseback. They beheld that over the river stretched a shaggy bridge, a girdle of bear skin cut into strips.
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