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Updated: June 13, 2025
“Well, gentlemen of Dobrzyn, I am nothing but a Jew; the Judge is no kith or kin of mine; I respect the Soplicas as very good gentlemen and my landlords; I respect also the Bartek and Maciej Dobrzynskis, as good neighbours and my benefactors; but I say thus: if you want to do violence to the Judge, that is very bad; some of you may get hurt and be killed.
Let him have the baton!” The Dobrzynskis cried, “We beg you to take it!” but the rest of the gentry shouted with one voice, “We forbid it!” The throng was breaking up into two groups, and, nodding their heads in contrary directions, one faction cried, “We forbid,” and the other, “We beg you.” Old Maciek sat in their midst the one dumb man, and his head alone was unmoved.
Imitating the Dobrzynskis, the rest of the gentry of the vicinity likewise assumed nicknames, or by-names.116 Now almost every family employs them, but only a few know that they originated in Dobrzyn, and were necessary there, while in the rest of the country they became a custom through mere stupid imitation.
Meanwhile the Podhajskis and the Isajewiczes, the Birbaszes, Wilbiks, Biergels, and Kotwiczes, seeing the Dobrzynskis under so severe constraint, began slowly to cool down from their former wrath; for the Polish gentry, though beyond measure quarrelsome and eager for fighting, are nevertheless not vindictive. So they ran to old Maciej for counsel.
Meanwhile more and more of the gentry were arriving; almost all the Dobrzynskis, and no few of the neighbours from the hamlets near by, armed and unarmed, in carts and in carriages, on foot and on horseback.
The staff was stationed in the yard, and with it many armed gentry, the Podhajskis, Birbaszes, Hreczechas, Biergels, all friends or kinsmen of the Judge. They had hastened to his relief when they heard of the attack upon him, the more eagerly since they had long been at odds with the Dobrzynskis. Who had summoned the battalion of Muscovites from the villages?
Also the dress of even the poorest of their women was different from the jackets of the peasants; they usually wore drilling or percale, herded their cattle in shoes not of bark but of leather, and reaped and even spun with gloves on. The Dobrzynskis were distinguished among their Lithuanian brethren by their language and likewise by their stature and their appearance.
Over the doors could be seen coats of arms of the Dobrzynskis, but shelves of cheeses veiled the bearings, and swallows had walled them in thickly with their nests. The interior of the house itself and of the stable and carriage-house you would find as full of accoutrements as an old armoury.
God forbid! Gentlemen and brothers, I stand on my rights. Why, the Count has won several times and has obtained no few decrees; the only trouble is to execute them! This was the ancient custom: the court wrote the decree, and the gentry carried it out, and especially the Dobrzynskis, and thence grew your fame in Lithuania!
When we were invited from our hamlet—and the Warden, My-boy Rembajlo invited us—we were told that great things were to be done, that the question did not affect the Dobrzynskis alone, but the whole district, the entire gentry; Robak mumbled the same thing, though he never finished his talk and always stammered and expressed himself obscurely.
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